Mossadegh is back in the saddle in Teheran and King Farouk is out in Cairo. Though there is little connection between these two happenings in the Near East, their proximity makes it possible to view both together. In Egypt the attempt to whip up a bitter spirit of nationalism to divert public attention from government misrule apparently has failed. In Iran the hot flames of nationalism are still burning freely although it seems that they may consume the government itself and bring down the nation’s economy.

Gen Mohammed Naguib has engineered a lightning army coup in Egypt and forced the abdication of playboy Farouk on the issue of corruption in government. Corruption and graft of course are known in all countries but in Egypt it is an ingrained system aided and abetted by the government which enriches one class of the population and keeps the other in squalor and misery. To divert attention from this state of affairs the government last year whipped up a strong anti-British sentiment over the Suez and the Sudan hoping thereby to save its own skin. The move did not wholly succeed. When it led to bloody riots in Cairo the king was forced to dismiss the Wafdist rulers and installed an “independent” premier. The premier Aly Maher resigned last March when he found his reform program blocked but has now been summoned again to the premiership as a result of the military coup.

What the results may be in regard to stability in Egypt and its joining with the West in a Middle East defense pact are open to conjecture in bankrupt Iran an opposite set of circumstances has put Mossadegh back into office. These circumstances are a combination of mob rule and— certainly unintentionally — a ruling by the International Court of Justice that it will not take jurisdiction in the British-Iranian oil dispute.

It is difficult to see how the return of Mossadegh will solve the oil dispute or provide the economic stability in Iran that is the cause of its troubles. Certain it is that violent nationalism having failed in Egypt is not the key to solution of Iran’s problems.