Chief Of Police Warns Iran Of Reds

July 25, 1952 — The Associated Press


The Mossadegh Project | June 12, 2024                      


IRANIANS WARNED OF COMMUNIST AIMS

Mossadegh’s Police Chief Says Reds’ Attempt To Use Outbreaks to Further Own Plans

By Nate Polowetsky

AP (The Associated Press) Tehran, Iran, July 25 (AP) — Premier Mohammed Mossadegh’s new national police chief warned Iranians last night that Communists are attempting to use the nationalistic outbreaks which drove former Premier Ahmed Qavam from power to further “sinister” Red aims. [Ahmad Ghavam]

Speaking in a nationwide broad cast, Chief Kazem Sheibani indicated members of the outlawed Tudeh (Communist) party had infiltrated nationalist organizations.

“Hound out such elements from your ranks and try to know them and reveal their plans,” Shefbani urged the Nationalists. “You must know that such people ostensibly but secretly prepare means to put into effect their filthy and perfidious plans.”

Sheibani, an army Brigadier, took over the police after the bloody riots Monday that forced Qavam to resign and restored Mossadegh to greater power than ever before. Thirty-five or more persons died in the outbursts.

Mossadegh, aged nationalist architect of Iran’s oil nationalization policy, had given up the premiership a few days earlier when Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi refused to allow him to become war minister in his new cabinet.

Riots Blamed On Reds

Sheibani charged that demonstrations against Iran’s Shah during the riots were staged by Red youth organizations.

“They try to commit treachery behind the camouflage of Nationalist demonstrations,” he asserted.

The police chief’s broadcast was the strongest indication yet that Nationalist leaders are worried over the extent to which Communists have been successful in infiltrating Nationalist organizations.

(The State Department in Washington charged yesterday that Communists were responsible for anti-American demonstrations during the Tehran rioting.)

Police, pulled off the streets by the Government during the violence Monday, were having some trouble resuming control of Tehran. In a small clash last night, officers going back to traffic duties at an important Tehran intersection had to use tear gas to oust Nationalist youths from the police beats they had assumed.

Assumed Police Duties

Pro-Mossadegh groups have been directing traffic and generally playing police in some sections of the city since the Government called its forces into barracks to let the mob exhaust itself.

Although anti-American feeling was boiling up in Tehran because of a belief that the United States had supported both Qavam and the British side of the Anglo-Iranian oil dispute, only one American was reported injured, slightly, in the demonstrations.

An unidentified United States army sergeant was struck by a flying brick — and that was believed to have been an accident.

There have been no United States Embassy orders to close American diplomatic and aid offices in Tehran, although such offices in the provinces automatically close when there is trouble.

A pro-government newspaper, Bakhtar Emrooz, predicted last night that Mossadegh would hold the post of War Minister as well as that of Premier in the new cabinet he is expected to present to parliament tomorrow or Sunday. His failure to gain administrative control of the army has been the principal factor in the Nationalist leader’s resignation last week.

Some 300 Mossadegh supporters, in a demonstration today on Churchill street behind the British Embassy, ripped down the street signs and replaced them with “Mossadegh street” signs. The demonstrators were identified as members of a small religious organization.

The Embassy, which faces on Ferdowsi Street near the Russian Embassy building, was not attacked. Churchill Street was so named during the Big Three wartime conference in Tehran. The city also has Roosevelt and Stalin streets.


Alternate headlines:

Mossadegh Police Chief Says Reds Use Nationalist Riots
Reds Using Iran Uprising To Push Aims
Iran Police Chief Warns Reds Fomenting Riots
Iranians Warned Of Red Motives
Iran Premier Warns People of Communists
Iranians Say Reds Try To ‘Muscle In’




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Related links:

Iran Threat to Deal With Reds Not Weakening U.S. Position (Sept. 20, 1951)

Mossadegh Is Reminded | The Evening Sun, Oct. 6, 1952

Mossadegh Backers Bar Iranian Reds | AP, June 19, 1953



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

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