“At the Brink of Collapse”

Prof. Fatemi on Iran’s Economic Outlook (1961)


The Mossadegh Project | March 10, 2020                  


Nasrollah Saifpour Fatemi (1910-1990) was a former Iranian delegate to the United Nations, author and brother of Hossein Fatemi. While a Professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he offered the following comments to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Note the misleadingly titled and unsupported ‘headline’ in this excerpt from their column “On the Spot”.



On the Spot
June 16, 1961

Mossadegh Return In Iran Forecast

TEANECK, N.J.

A PREDICTION that crisis-ridden Iran will return to the national front government of 84-year-old neutralist Mohammed Mossadegh has been issued here by Prof. Nasrollah S. Fatemi, head of the social sciences department at Dickinson College. [Mossadegh was exactly 79 to the day, not 84]

“Since 1953,” he said, “Iran has received $1 billion in U.S. and World Bank economic aid, plus $600 million in U.S. military aid, and (at $300 million a year) $2 billion in oil royalties.

“Yet for the first time since 1921, the oil-rich land of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi has a foreign debt of $500 million. Four generals now under arrest are accused of stealing Government property worth $17 million.” [Five generals, not four: Mehdi-Gholi Alavi-Moghadam, Mohammad Daftari, Haj Ali-Kia, Ruhullan Novisi, and Ali Akbar Zargham]

•    •    •

PROF. FATEMI concludes that Iran is “at the brink of collapse.” He praises Premier Ali Amini as “a good man, even though he and his brothers own as much land as the State of New Jersey.” [Amini resigned a year later]

—JAMES HANSEN



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Related links:

Iran Survives Via Hard Way | Utica Observer-Dispatch, July 28, 1961

CIA Weighs Iran’s “Serious Financial Problems” (June 2, 1961)

Golden Egg Goose Story Repeated | The Globe-Gazette, August 29, 1961



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

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