Bargain with Dr. Moussadek ?
Since there have been other occasions on which Dr. Moussadek seemed willing to discuss the possibility of restarting the Persian oil industry, and since there have been plenty of previous failures when the attempt has been made to pin him down to set terms and fixed promises, the latest Per- sian Note should clearly not be made the occasion for extrava- gant hopes. The days when it was possible to regard the Persian Premier as subject to the pressure of events, and necessarily driven by the approach of economic breakdown towards an inevitable compromise, are over. Disaster may break him but it is unlikely to bend him. Yet negotiation hangs by the thread of this one man's intentions and anyone who wishes to place reliance on anything so tortuous and incon- sistent is taking a considerable risk. Even the argument that Britain, having lost possession and control of the Persian oil industry, has nothing more to lose has its weak- nesses. For the latest Persian demand that £20 million' should be paid over before further bargaining can proceed may simply amount to an invitation to the A.I.O.C. to lose that sum as well as the hundreds of millions it has lost already. Yet still the fact remains that a resumption of the flow of oil would be a benefit to the world as well as to Persia, and still common sense requires that the attempt to bring Dr. Moussadek to terms should go on. Negotiations by means of Notes have now been taken just about as far as they can be. For the future something less formal is probably needed.
