Be Our Valentine
February 14, 1959 — The Times Record

The Mossadegh Project | July 19, 2015      


By 1959, The Times Record of Troy, New York had already penned a bag full of love letters to that Persian dreamboat, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This Valentine’s Day tribute to the Shah in their Saturday evening edition, February 14, 1959, was especially sweet.




IRAN HOLDS COURSE

Russia’s rulers are talking about “serious consequences” because Iran prefers a security agreement with the United States to a non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union. Iran’s Shah has heard this sort of talk before now and shows no more concern today than in the past.

The bluster on the part of the Kremlin merely betrays disappointment. The Russians never give up trying to draw Persia within the iron curtain, it would seem. After the war, Russian troops marched out of Iran only after the United Nations intervened. Later the Communists undertook to conquer from within with the help of Dr. Mossadegh and came close to succeeding, so close that the Shah fled the country briefly. [sheer propaganda] In more recent years, however, Iran has been a military ally of the United States and linked with Turkey and Pakistan.

The Russians had no reason to anticipate that their attempt to pry Iran from its position would succeed at this time. In fact, now that communism is making headway in Iraq the Shah has added cause for misgivings and fresh inducement to look to the West for survival. The Russians are driving hard to make inroads in the Middle East and any weakening on the part of the Shah could be fatal to Iran. The Moscow outcries against Iran therefore are no more meaningful than all the other propoganda [sic—propaganda] barrages leveled at the country in the past. And the Shah shows no more inclination to change course than before.




Related links:

IRAN: Gift HorseTIME magazine, August 19, 1953

Handsome Shah of Iran Openly Defies KremlinUPI, October 12, 1955

Pushing People AroundThe Times Record, June 20, 1955



MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”

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