Playing Ball With the Communists

August 19, 1953 — The Palm Beach Post


Arash Norouzi
The Mossadegh Project | April 4, 2012                     


On the morning of Wednesday, August 19, 1953, newspaper readers in West Palm Beach, Florida woke to this scathing anti-Mossadegh editorial in The Palm Beach Post. Meanwhile in Iran — some eight hours ahead of American eastern standard time — a bloody Western-backed military coup was winding down, the home of Premier Mossadegh was completely destroyed and looted, and hundreds of Iranians, like Iran’s fledgling democracy, lie dead.

In their contradictory and sensationalistic editorial, the Post chose to ignore the substance of their own main front page headline that day, Communist Mobs Battle Iran Troops, based on this United Press wire report from the day prior. The article showed that Iran’s Communists were actually resisting, not cooperating with Mossadegh’s government.




Weakling ‘Strong Man’

It is a strange political anomaly that makes the fainting, crying Premier Mohammed Mossadegh the strongest man in Iran today. It is a strange trick of fate against the West that this frail weakling should be able to cause the Shah of Iran to flee his country in fear for his life. There can be only one answer to this freakish political twist in Iran—the Communists!

It becomes more and more apparent each day that Premier Mossadegh, a Nationalist of the first water, is either a willing or a foolish tool of the old supposedly outlawed Communist (Tudeh) party in Iran. It is only too apparent that, whatever his game, Mossadegh is playing ball with the undercover Communists, who, in turn, are being directed straight from the Kremlin.

With a known weakling like Mossadegh as the “strongest man” in Iran, it should be comparatively easy for the Reds to run the Iranian government from now on in just about as they please. That way, Russian troops will not have to fire a shot to take over Iran and its invaluable oil fields that now are idle in that bankrupt little Near East nation.

This is the spot the Reds have been looking for, and if indeed they did not themselves engineer the coup which caused Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi to flee the country, there is little doubt that they will profit by it through Mossadegh.

Mohammed Mossadegh, intensely nationalistic, almost a fanatic, is the type the Communists from Moscow can easily fool and lull into a sense of security. He then will awaken some bright morning to find the old Tudeh Party in full political and military control of him and his nation, and he will be a vassal of the men in the Kremlin, just so long as he is obedient.

Truly, never in our experience, has a country been ruled by such a weak “strong man” as Iran and its Mohammed Mossadegh!


Mossadegh & Arbenz & Lumumba & Sukarno & Allende... shirts

Mossadegh & Arbenz & Lumumba & Sukarno & Allende... t-shirts

Truman and Mossadegh’s First Messages on Iran Oil Dispute (1951)
President Truman and Premier Mossadegh's First Messages on Iran Oil Dispute (1951)

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Related links:

One Man Rule | U.S. editorial, August 18, 1953

In Defense Of Mossadegh | Letter to Detroit Free Press (Dec. 11, 1953)

Crisis In Iran | The Monroe News-Star, August 19, 1953



MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”

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