The Buck Gets Passed

November 20, 1952 — The Bakersfield Californian


The Mossadegh Project | January 17, 2016                      


The pessimistic “another Korea” mantra gets its own editorial in this Bakersfield, California newspaper — Nov. 20, 1952.




Iran Is Prime Problem

Shoved off the front pages by the election and other matters closer to home, the problem of Iran has been getting more difficult in the past month or so, defying all efforts by certain of the world’s chancellories to work out some plan of solution.

The seriousness of the problem has compelled several correspondents in the past week or 10 days to comment pessimistically upon the course of events there. The tone of their articles indicate that Iran rivals, if it doesn’t surpass, Korea in the standings of world problems demanding attention.

The weeping Mossadegh, upon whose frail shoulders rests the fate of this oil-rich and money-poor nation, has made no progress in his efforts to make other nations conduct their business with him solely along his lines and, in the meantime, the poor get poorer and even the rich are not doing so well.

A situation like this is made to order for the Communists, who already have a sizable party in Iranian politics, the Tudeh, which is very active in exploiting the advantages handed to them by the quarrel between the western nations and Mossadegh.

According to the latest reports, the Communists have been raising a large propaganda crop among the peasantry. They are consolidating their forces in this field, mindful of the fact that if they had been certain of the peasantry and the army when they seized control of Teheran last summer they would have the country by the throat today. [Absurd. They obviously never “seized control” of Tehran.]

They are concentrating their fire on the Americans, and strangely they are joined in this by Dr. Mossadegh’s own party, which agrees with the Reds that the Western powers are to blame for Iran’s troubles and remain oblivious to the somewhat bungling moves of the weeping one. [Actually, many Communists opposed Mossadegh — something in common with the West!]

If President Truman [Harry S. Truman] told President-elect Eisenhower [Dwight D. Eisenhower] the facts concerning Iran, and confessed some of the bungling our State Department has accomplished there, it is no wonder that Gen. Eisenhower emerged from the meeting this week “grim and unsmiling.” He would have learned that Korea, by comparison, is a simple task.

President-elect Eisenhower will be confronted with the decision soon after his inaugural which will have much to do with the survival of the Western world, according to the correspondents in the Middle East, who watch developments in Iran with close interest, and contend that here and not in Korea is the tinderbox of world conflict.

Gen. Eisenhower will have the choice of allowing oil-rich Iran to fall into the hands of the Communists who will transfer it to Russia as a satellite and exploit this victory in their campaign to capture other Middle Eastern states, or sending American troops to maintain a government whose only virtue insofar as we are concerned is that it is not Communist. [A false set of options. Why not provide the financial loan Mossadegh requested, or purchase Iranian oil?]



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Related links:

“Iran Problem” Now Is To Keep Her On Our Side | Bruce Biossat, October 9, 1951

Senators Fight Mossadegh | The Bakersfield Californian, August 11, 1952

Closing of American Offices in Iran Is Pay-Off on State Dept. Blunders | Oakland Tribune



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

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