Collapse of Oil Industry in Iran Brings Misery Despite Mossadegh

...Imminent Disaster...
November 11, 1951 — The Brooklyn Eagle

The Mossadegh Project | April 23, 2014

This Brooklyn Eagle (aka The Brooklyn Daily Eagle) editorial from Sunday, November 11, 1951, recognizing the legitimacy of nationalization, was about as reasonable as they were going to get.

Collapse of Oil Industry in Iran
Brings Misery Despite Mossadegh

While Premier Mohammed Mossadegh has been in Washington, no oil has been produced in Iran. In fact, no oil has been produced there since mid-Summer when the nationalization of the industry became effective and the men who knew the techniques were called off their jobs and sent home. Meanwhile, the effects of this triumph of nationalistic pride have come home in tragic form to the people and to a shaky government.

Dr. Mossadegh has been in the United States a month. He has achieved a diplomatic victory in the respect that he has opposed successfully United Nations Security Council intervention in what he maintains is a purely domestic matter. But he has not accomplished the more vital purpose of bringing about an arrangement that will save his government from collapse and his people from misery, if not violent disorder.

It is not surprising that Tehran reports that Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi has asked Premier Mossadegh to return home, regardless of the state of his mission. The government is feeling the pinch of the loss of $4,000,000 a month in oil royalties, making it necessary to draw heavily on gold reserves and even to consider sale of the crown jewels. To add to Iran’s problems, widespread strikes are threatened.

Britain’s exploitation of Iran with a view to wringing the utmost in profits from the oil industry has contributed to the development of the crisis in which it is now involved. Britain has learned its lesson of economic justice at a high cost and is willing to make important concessions in the interests of settlement.

Nationalization must be accepted as an accomplished fact not without justification. But Premier Mossadegh may be playing a reckless game, freighted with disaster, if he presses his advantages too far. While he obstructs, retreats and maneuvers, the industry on which the economy of his country is based remains idle and misery and disaster become more imminent.

Related links:

A Bad Break Is Feared — The Knickerbocker News - October 17, 1951

Reserve and Recourse? — The Cornell Daily Sun, October 18, 1951

Iran Premier's Stubbornness Brings Crisis — The Brooklyn Eagle - September 12, 1951

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