A MOST hopeful development in the Iranian oil crisis is the reported new willingness of the British to make major concessions to Premier Mossadegh. The British have been understandably reluctant to deal with the wily and weepy leader of Iran. It was he who took over the Anglo-Iranian oil properties last year and kicked the British out of his country. But it has become increasingly probable, since Britain retaliated by putting the economic squeeze on Iran beginning many months ago, that if Mossadegh falls the Communists will take over.

This threat is what most of all concerns America. True, as the British have pointed out, Mossadegh is not above using the Communist danger to blackmail the West. But it is a danger, nonetheless, and an imminent one.

Now it appears that Britain is coming around to what has been the American viewpoint: namely, that compared to the political and strategic disaster for the free world that Communist victory in Iran would mean, the financial troubles of the Anglo-Iranian oil company aren’t so towering. Britain seems ready to join with us in a new settlement proposal to Mossadegh, and some of the reported terms of the proposal indicate that that country has given considerable ground.

Mossadegh will naturally have to give ground too if there is to be an agreement and if Iran’s oil, now of no economic good to that nearby bankrupt country, is to flow again. And he’s in an awkward spot, since, as one correspondent in Iran put it, he has “to make a business deal when the principal desire of the political elements in Iran [is] to see Britain humiliated.” However, Mossadegh has shown rare political agility when in awkward spots before and there’s no reason he can’t do so again.