Premier Mossadegh’s out-of-hand rejection of the joint British-American proposal for reviving the Iranian oil industry and saving Iran from rack and ruin is about what should have been anticipated in light of Dr. Mossadegh’s previous impermeability to any sort of reason.

What we should do now is not so much a matter of choice as one of waiting to see what possibly can be done. It is not beyond imagination of course that saner heads in the Iranian Parliament will insist that Iran’s formal reply to the British-American proposal be couched in language less flat than the verbal reaction of the premier. If this does not eventuate and if the Iranians hope to wait out a better offer presumably they will have to be allowed to wait.

The proposal perhaps represents about the limit of the British willingness to make concessions. If the Iranians were interested in anything less than the complete rout of the British government and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company the last suggestions offer a way to accomplish the salvation of the legitimate interests of all concerned.

The chances are that Dr. Mossadegh is so politically bound to his all-or-nothing policy that it would be internally dangerous for him to compromise anything. If that is the situation the British and the Americans can begin asking themselves whether even under conditions of surrender to Dr. Mossadegh he possesses the political power to keep the country out of the hands of the Communist Tudeh Party.

More and more it appears that the Western governments will have to determine contingent policies more far-reaching than any plan to appease Dr. Mossadegh. They will have to decide as best they can what they propose to do in event of a Communist coup in Iran that would deliver control of the country over to the Soviet Union and whether they are willing to risk a showdown with the Russians over the issue.