THE WHITE HOUSE announces that Henry F. Grady has asked permission to resign as Ambassador to Iran and that President Truman will grant the request “at the appropriate time.”

A Baltimore Sun correspondent in Teheran reported the other day that Mr. Grady was being forced out by British pressure on our State Department. Mr. Grady said only that he had no intention of resigning.

But it is known that British governmental and oil company officials had objected to the Ambassador’s activities as a mediator, believing that he had lessened their bargaining power by publicly urging them to make concessions to Iran.

Mr. Grady’s activities appear to have been wholly consistent with Mr. Truman’s and the State Department’s policy toward the Iranian oil controversy. Is he now being made the goat, to appease the British Foreign Office, because the policy has backfired?

W. Averell Harriman’s special mission to Iran would seem to have little point unless he is authorized to do and say more than Mr. Grady was permitted to do and say.

If the United States had held aloof from the Iranian controversy until both sides were prepared to accept friendly arbitration, we might now be in a position to accomplish something. The present danger is that we’ll wind up by making both sides mad at us and destroy our own usefulness.