Time To Take A Stand

October 12, 1951 — The Brooklyn Eagle


The Mossadegh Project | October 29, 2021                     


Lead editorial in The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper (Brooklyn, New York).




Egyptian Crisis More Menacing
Even Than That Faced in Iran

The Egyptian crisis has quickly assumed aspects far more menacing, more violent, more perilous to peace than that which smolders in Iran. It has become dominated by the spirit of the mob. A spirit marked by passion and hatred, which resists reason and is blind even to self interest, and which finds expression in destruction.

Reports from Cairo indicate that Egypt’s politicians have done their work well. The people have been aroused against the so-called iniquities of the British. The policy of denouncing the Anglo-Egyptian treaty and driving British troops from Egyptian soil has stirred nationalistic fervor to a white heat.

Anti-foreign rioting, attacks upon the property of British, French and American business houses and physical danger to nationals of these countries are among the immediate results of Prime Minister Nahas Pasha’s challenge to Britain.

It is a challenge which Britain is determined to resist. There seems to be no alternative to this decision unless Britain is to concede that it is no longer a world force, that it is powerless to protect its own interests and that surrender is from this time forward to be the order of the day.

Somewhere a stand has to be made. Britain’s moral and legal claims upon continued occupation of the Suez Canal Zone are indisputable. They are established in a treaty which Egypt has no right to abrogate without displaying the complete lack of national integrity which is a distinguishing characteristic of Communist governments.

Egypt is motivated, apparently, by the spirit of nationalism and by the conviction that Britain has lost either the spirit or the power to resist. Britain cannot afford to permit this impression to prevail. It would mean in this specific instance an irreparable blow to the Western defense in a vital area and also the weakening of the Allied cause in the whole Middle East, which is so important and so vulnerable.

Britain has military units in the canal area and in Sudan. They must remain there and, if necessary, they must be reinforced. A policy of firmness and the maintenance of military strength may have a sobering effect upon the reckless and violent spirit which the crisis has aroused in its early stages and at the same time improve the prospect of a peaceful adjustment.

Secretary of State Acheson, conscious of our own vital concern for a favorable turn of events in Egypt, is confident that new proposals, to be presented to Egypt “within the next few days,” will serve as a sound basis for settlement of the disputes over the canal and Sudan. [Dean Acheson] Indeed he put the United States Government on record against the unilateral abrogation of the two agreements as threatened by Egypt's Prime Minister.

Not only Britain but the whole anti-Communist alliance has a stake in the settlement of this new crisis in Egypt.


Divvying Up the Loot: The Iran Oil Consortium Agreement of 1954
Divvying Up the Loot: The Iran Oil Consortium Agreement of 
1954

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Related links:

And Now, Egypt | The Lansing State Journal, Oct. 12, 1951

In Step On Middle East | The Advertiser, March 12, 1953

More Woe For Britain | San Bernardino County Sun, Oct. 20, 1951



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

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