Of all the countries bordering on the vast Soviet frontiers, Iran is probably the most valuable and certainly the most vulnerable potential prize for Comrade Stalin. [Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin] This backward land contains a vast supply of oil, the one resource which is as indispensable to the would-be defenders of the free world as it is to the potential Asiatic aggressor. And this resource is located in a country which has been notorious for political and economic weakness.

These weaknesses are nothing new. Iran has long been a land of splendor for the few and wretched poverty for the many. A consistent tradition of fraudulent elections has placed the control of both the Majlis, an anarchic popular assembly, and the Senate, a lifeless rubber stamp, in the hands of the few “great” families. Titular head of this politically disorganized state is Shah Mohammed Riza, an enlightened but uninfluential man who came to power by virtue of his father's usurpation of the throne in 1921. [Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, heir to Reza Shah]

Iran has but two well-organized political parties. Though nominally opposed in their views, they are united today in their hostility to all foreign influence in Iran. One, the outlawed Tudeh party, is a well organized and vociferous Communist minority paying strict allegiance to Moscow. The other is a much more numerous group of fanatical Moslems called the National Front, whose militant nationalism is directed against all foreign interests in the country. [Including Soviet Russia, right?]

It is the agitation of this latter group against “British imperialism in Iran,” echoed by the Communists, which has in the short space of two months brought about the assassination of one premier, [Ali Razmara] the resignation last Friday of his replacement, the moderate Hussein Ala, and on Saturday the ill-considered but unanimous vote in the Majlis to nationalize British oil interests outright and at once. [Hossein Ala] Recent news shows this stampede still in full career: Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, leader of the extremist National Front and recently made Premier, led the Senate in a unanimous vote to complete the nationalization of oil operations.

The expropriation of Anglo-Iranian’s facilities may prove devastating for Iran, now so dependent on British-paid oil revenues but lacking the technicians and experience to make the huge operation pay in its own hands. [AIOC] Yet it is a hundred times more serious for Britain and the western world. From Abadan, the world’s largest refinery located at the head of the Persian gulf, flows $500,000,000 worth of oil per year, providing almost the entire oil supply for the British fleet and 43 per cent of the needs of western Europe.

To the protesting British, expropriation means not only barefaced Iranian repudiation of an oil treaty supposed to run until 1993 but the probable loss of a huge capital investment. For the Iranians now propose to compensate the illegal seizure from the uncertain revenues of equally uncertain future operations.

Should Stalin meanwhile extend Soviet political influence by aid to Iranian commies and an oil deal with the Iranian Government he could threaten not only the entire Middle East oil supply but also the security of Turkey and the British ocean lifeline which begins in the Persian gulf, and passes via Suez to the Mediterranean. What the Iranians do with this vital resource after the present nationalistic fever subsides should command our very close attention.