Come To Your Senses
July 8, 1952 — The Advertiser

The Mossadegh Project | February 3, 2020                           


The Advertiser (Adelaide, South Australia) newspaper published this as their lead editorial.



The Advertiser (Adelaide, South Australia) newspaper

DR. MOSSADEQ CARRIES ON

Dr. Mossadeq has been given a vote of confidence by the new Majlis and if, as seems certain, the Senate follows suit, this bizarre but stubborn figure will continue to lead Persia down a path which becomes more precipitous as the months go by.

Not surprisingly, he had few competitors for the Prime Ministership. No one perhaps would willingly take over the office at this stage. Dr. Mossadeq has had the credit for expelling the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in the name of national independence, and his opponents are doubtless agreed that he should also shoulder the responsibility for the economic consequences of his policy.

This probably accounts for the negligible support given in the Majlis for Qavam-es-Sultaneh, [Ahmad Ghavam] a former Premier, around whom some of the opposition to Dr. Mossadeq has been crystallising. It would be an unpropitious time to challenge the Prime Minister openly. A new Government could not extricate the country from its economic crisis without departing from Dr. Mossadeq’s policy of no compromise with the British, and that would still be a dangerous course to follow.

A “little more patience,” Dr. Mossadeq has been telling the country, and it will be able to reap the benefits of its “fight against imperialism.” It is his own secret how the reaping is to be done. The oil industry has been practically at a standstill for nine months; unemployment is growing; business has stagnated, and the Government’s dollar and sterling resources are growing steadily smaller.

On the other side of the picture is the blankness of outlook for resuming sales of oil abroad. The Government’s first attempt to ship a cargo of oil from Abadan has yielded nothing but more fuel for pouring on the fires of anti-British feeling in Tehran. The tanker Rose Mary, under charter to Swiss interests, was detained in Aden on the ground that she was carrying oil belonging of right to the Anglo-Iranian Company, and she remains a subject of dispute which cannot be settled until the courts have pronounced upon it.

This experience will unquestionably have a discouraging effect on other would-be customers for Persian oil. Meanwhile, the International Court at The Hague is considering its competence to intervene in the major dispute between the British company and the Persian Government. Should it decide that it is competent it will proceed to a hearing.

But the cardinal fact is that it has no power to bring Dr. Mossadeq to his economic senses. The Prime Minister is not bound to abide by a decision of the Court. He is his own master and can take the country whither he will. If he is to be halted in his ruinous path it will only be from within. But for the present those who could stop him are content to follow.


“If I sit silently, I have sinned”: A guiding principle
The untold story behind Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh's famous quote “If I sit silently, I have sinned”


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Related links:

Dealing With Dr. Mossadeq | The Advertiser, September 17, 1952

Will U.S. Lose Big Gamble on Aid For Explosive Iran? | July 29, 1952 editorial

Persian Time Bomb | The Mercury, August 6, 1952



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

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