The presence has been noted in Iran of a delegation of American oil experts, described as there on no official mission, to offer help in getting the nationalized Iranian oil industry going again. The Iranian government dispossessed the British, who had rights under long term agreements, in 1951, hoping to exploit their oil resources themselves.

Since then the Iranians have lacked the technical knowledge to make much use of their oil. A British inspired embargo has effectively prevented them from moving the oil in tankers. They are sitting on vast wealth while the country goes broke.

The American oil experts, led by W. Alton Jones, president of the Cities Service company, were called in to resolve this impasse. Apparently Cities Service expects to move and market the oil when production is resumed, if it is. These developments, not unnaturally, have caused much chagrin in Britain. The British have even voiced suspicion of the motives of Dean Acheson’s state department, customarily regarded as an auxiliary of the British foreign office.

It is being said in London that the state department had privately sanctioned the trip of the American experts, and that the Jones mission is designed to undercut an offer which the British government intends to make shortly, looking toward a settlement with Iran. Of course, the state department denies that it has any interest in the Jones party.

It must be remembered that an essential part of the Truman-Acheson foreign policy is the belief that economic collapse is important in throwing weak countries into the arms of soviet imperialism. Mr. Truman’s point 4 project for expending American funds to improve underdeveloped countries is supposed to ward off such unfortunate occurrences and keep these nations on friendly terms with the United States. [aka Point Four]

The key to the Iranian economic dilemma is the stagnation of its only important industry. The Truman administration has allocated 23 million dollars to help out the Iranian economy this year, but until oil production is resumed there can be no substantial improvement.

This latest form of dollar diplomacy necessarily involves the United States in the domestic politics of foreign nations. In Iran American point 4 policy is being exerted in support of Premier Mossadegh’s dictatorship both against the British and the feudal land owners among the Iranians. As point 4 is working out, it means that we are giving political and financial support to whatever faction in these “underdeveloped” countries will espouse the policies recommended by our economic technical advisers.

In Iran there is an identity of interest between the dictatorship and the American point 4 administration. The Mossadegh government naturally wants to get the country back on a going financial basis. The point 4 advisers want to restore the economy in order to forestall complete economic collapse and revolution, which might put Iran into the communist camp.

If there are some juicy plums to be plucked by the insiders in furtherance of these generally desirable aims, then so much the better. In Iran there are. Altho it must pain Mr. Acheson and the state department no end to think that dear old Britain may lose out to American interests in the exploitation of Iranian oil, that cannot be helped. It is implicit in point 4 that there must be a degree of American economic imperialism along with the handouts of dollars. And, in any event, it is always possible to offer the rationalization that if Britain cannot do business with the Persians, it is certainly better for America to take over rather than let the chance go to Russia by default.

Felix Morley, a prescient observer, recently wrote in Barron’s, the financial weekly, “Opportunism has now reached the stage where it is solemnly argued that we are helping Iranian democracy by subsidizing Iranian dictatorship.” Indeed, in the name of democracy, the Truman Fair Deal is moving to support dictatorships that will endorse the point 4 program—a curious example of the wheel coming full cycle following the conclusion of a World war in which the American mission was defined as the eradication of dictatorship.