The most significant fact about the break in diplomatic relations between Iran and Great Britain is that the problem of Iranian oil is now in America’s lap. Of the three, countries in a position to negotiate a solution — Britain, Iran and America — only Iran and this country now remain in diplomatic contact.

In a time of low regard for the traditional methods of diplomacy, when the functions of ambassador are obscured by preoccuption with agencies like the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it is easy to forget that certain international affairs are peculiarly susceptible to the older techniques. The case of Iranian oil is one of them.

No matter how effective Mossadegh has been in exploiting the xenophobic aspects of the oil dispute, the fact remains that any reasonable agreement he negotiates will probably be politically acceptable in his own country. Roughly the same thing applies to Great Britain and particularly to this country. Iran is one issue on which the State Department and the President are not in any sense prisoners of a rigid and oversimplified public opinion.

Certainly this is the penultimate stage in this country’s intervention in the dispute. The first was the generally hands-off period in which we watched with some dismay while the British and Iranians reached a complete standoff in the Spring of 1951. The second role was that of unsuccessful moderator, when Averell Harriman went to Iran for the futile conferences in the Summer of 1951. The third stage brought us to the point of active participation — the working out of the joint Truman-Churchill offer. Now in the fourth change of character we must, as the only one of the Anglo-American partnership in contact with the Iranians, carry the burden of negotiations ourselves.

It is a delicate task, for it requires at least a partial disentanglement from our position as cosponsor of the unaccepted Truman-Churchill offer. But if it is successful it can lead to the last, equally difficult stage of persuading the British to accept what we have negotiated.