IRAN, WHICH HAS BEEN UNDER MOB RULE, has proclaimed a one-man dictatorship under Premier Mossadegh .

Mossadegh used the mob to overawe his political opposition and to destroy the thin facade of representative government which Iran’s feudalistic landlords had tolerated. Now we shall see whether he is the mob’s master or its slave.

But the alternating fits of weeping and fainting to which the aged premier is addicted are the attributes of a strong man.

And only a strong man would seem able to rescue the country from the insane asylum nationalism and religious fanaticism which have produced its present chaos.

The government is practically bankrupt. Most of the royal family is seeking sanctuary abroad. Oil operations are at a virtual standstill and the employes of the exiled Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. have joined the country’s ragged hordes of unemployed.

ONLY A MYSTIC living in a dream world completely isolated from reality, such as Mossadegh seems, to be, would undertake to lead Iran out of its present morass of hate and violence with anything but the utmost pessimism.

And if Mossadegh fails, who would want the assignment?

Ahmed Qavam, one of the country’s most accomplished elder statesmen, lasted only four days in the premiership before the mob forced him out. [Ahmad Ghavam]

Now his private estate is being confiscated, to be divided among the heirs of persons killed when the police tried to put down the mob.

Against that background there aren’t likely to be many aspirants to head Iran’s crumbling government.

Meanwhile, why are the American military and Point Four missions remaining in that country when they are being denounced and reviled, in the Iranian Parliament, as well as on the streets of Tehran? Nothing constructive can be accomplished in such an atmosphere.

There are enough legitimate demands for our money without wasting it in places where it is defeating our own purposes.