The Persian people may be poor, they may be ignorant, but they are not simple. And above all their politicians know a good dodge when they see it. Thus thirty members of the Iranian Parliament and seven editors opposed to Prime Minister Mossadegh have barricaded themselves in the Parliament building.

In this they are following the example of Mossadegh himself who three months ago became a self-elected prisoner in the Parliament building at Teheran, sleeping on a bare cot and refusing to emerge publicly for fear of assassination. The tactics proved effective. The longer he pursued this dramatic course, the stronger grew his public support among the masses of the Persians—and the worse his opponents fared. And this seems to be what is happening in the case of Mossadegh’s oppositionists. They seem gradually to be gaining cohorts.

There is little mystery as to the reason. With bankruptcy in the national treasury, thousands of unpaid civil servants and jobless oil workers want a constructive settlement of the dispute about Iran’s oil. The shenanigans of the Tudeh Communist Party have begun to worry Iranian conservatives. Meantime, world markets are being lost.

Signs multiply, despite the ultimatum to the Western oil buyers, that Mossadegh’s extremist policy is undergoing change.