After the mob scenes the other day in Shiraz and Teheran we can better understand the recent request of Ayatollah Sayed Abolghassem Kashani, speaker of the Majlis, the lower house of Iran’s parliament. The speaker asked permission from frequently bedridden Premier Mohammed Mossadegh for the opposition deputies to go armed because of the turbulence of Iranian life.

Under Premier Mossadegh and his extreme nationalists violence is recurrent and pandemic in the ancient land of the Persians and related tribes. The attacks by mobs upon the U.S. Point Four headquarters and the homes of Americans in Shiraz arose from public charges by Mossadegh’s Pan Iran party that we use Point Four for espionage purposes in Iran. [Though the Pan-Iranist Party supported Mossadegh, his group was the National Front]

The wily old premier should be held to strict accountability for these outrages. His acerb nationalism, his determination to strip the moderate Shah of his remaining powers, the incitations which he gives to Moslem fanatics are shaming Iran in the eyes of the world. [He wanted the Shah to reign constitutionally. Islamic fanatics were already radicalized, and many opposed him.]

One of the ironies of our times is that while many Americans and some Western Europeans are striving for the extinction of nationalism in a world order of one sort or another, the nationalist movements in the Arab world, in Asia and Africa are reaching a malevolence unknown to the centuries of nationalism, i.e., the 18th and 19th. In striving for national independence the politicos of a dozen dusty, down-at-heels capitals east and south of Suez are only proving their incapacity for self-government. To the outward eye nearly all of these movements, and Iran’s is conspicuous, are devoid of idealism, representing merely power struggles among individuals and parties.

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