Another Flare-Up

Iran shook last week with its worst crisis since the revolt in Azerbaijan in 1945-46. Just as Premier Hussein Ala's strategy of conciliation seemed to be cooling off his heated country, disorder flared up again. The new outbreak of violence was plainly Red-inspired; it aimed at seizing the leadership of the popular and inflammable oil nationalization drive.

In the oil port of Bandar Mashur, troops shot down one woman in a mob of strikers. At Abadan nine strikers were killed. With clubs, rocks and fists, the mob battered to death three British employees of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., mauled six others. Strikers there all but shut down the world's largest oil refinery.

A month ago the anti-British riots were led by the extremist National Front. Frontist Chief Dr. Mohammed Mossadeq now seemed ready for moderation: he spoke of Premier Ala as his "friend of 30 years." But the Communists had no intention of letting calm and conciliation reign. In Teheran, they called themselves the National Association for Fighting the A.I.O.C., rallied in the capital's Majlis Square in defiance of police orders. Young men wearing lapel buttons decorated with Picasso's dove and the word "peace" led a crowd of 7,000 in clenched-fist salutes, in shouts for the abolition of martial law in the oilfields and the freeing of Communist political prisoners.

Solemnly and urgently, Premier Ala warned the Majlis that the country faced one of its "most critical and dangerous moments in history." He won parliamentary approval for his proclamation of martial law in seven areas of southern Iran.

With equal urgency, British Ambassador Sir Francis Shepherd, using the same words spoken by Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison in the House of Commons, told Iran's Premier that Britain reserved "the right to act as we see fit to protect British lives and property." This might mean landing British forces in southern Iran. Five British warships were within reasonable range of the troubled area.

Sparks were dropping thick & fast around the Iran tinderbox. If the British land troops in Iran, the Russians might well invoke the Treaty of 1921* and come across the border from the north.

* Its Article Six provides: if a third party should use Persia as a base of operations against Russia, "the U.S.S.R. shall have the right to advance its troops into the Persian interior."

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