BRITISH and American diplomats are frank to admit they have played out their string in devising solutions for the oil crisis in Iran. It is still a crisis a year and a half after nationalization of the industry because of a frail political mystic named Mohammed Mossadegh who maintains himself as premier by stubborn refusal to settle the matter on any reasonable basis.

Mossadegh himself seems to be running out of ideas for prolonging the controversy. His latest offer to Great Britain is that Iran pay the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for properties in Iran on the same basis used in Britain when industries were nationalized under the Labor government. [and this is unreasonable how?] It isn’t even a new proposal. He made the same offer as far back as September 1951, and repetition does not make it any more palatable to the British. The fact that it is coupled with outrageous demands for countercompensation—much greater than any sum Iran would be willing to pay the company for the Abadan refinery—dooms Mossadegh’s “new” offer to the wastebasket with all the others.

Around the General Assembly of the United Nations there is talk about a new proposal to be engineered by the U.S. as a sort of international broker. It is impossible to imagine what new solution can have been dreamed up at this stage.

If, through any circumstance or combination of circumstances the Mossadegh government should collapse, the outlawed Tudeh (Communist) Party might find Iran vulnerable to its synthetic nationalism as a substitute for Mossadegh’s native brand. If that happens, the West might be forced to take extraordinary steps to deny the country’s oil to Soviet Russia. It is sobering to picture Russian armed forces posed alongside the Suez Canal with oil of the Middle East at their backs and the Near East under their chins.

The chain reaction which could be induced by accident or other means in Iran would menace the entire Asian African bridge area. There is no doubt that the war in Korea has priority on President elect Eisenhower’s foreign policy agenda but this complex problem of Iran and other problems presented by this entire area of distant lands must be placed very near the top as well.