Persian Honey-Pot
None of the hopeful forecasts of conversations on Persian oil on the basis of the latest Anglo-American proposals has shown the slightest sign of being fulfilled. Dr. Moussadek has not dropped one of his outrageous collection of bargaining-points. In fact during the past week he has added a new one in the shape of a belated claim for the payment of taxes on the oil which the British forces in Persia used during the war. And if that is the attitude of the Persian Prime Minister, then there can be little hope that the Majlis, when it holds its post- poned session next week presided over by the even more fanatical Ayatullah Kashani, will drive him in the direction of more reasonable proposals. The British and United States Governments will no doubt go on trying, but they have already made all, and more than all, the concessions that can reason- ably be made. The next stage therefore must represent an attempt by Dr. Moussadek to see how many unreasonable con- cessions he can extort from them. Obviously he enters upon this task full of confidence. Nobody knows better than he, through the experiments he has already made upon his own countrymen, the lengths to which unreason can be taken. And he must be encouraged by the impressive, and apparently growing, volume of enquiries by foreigners, about the future development of Persia's vast, accessible and much-coveted oil resources. Mr. Alton Jones and the other American experts who have now arrived in Persia, Dr. Schacht who has also arrived and the German technicians with whom Dr. Hussein Makki has been in contact in Hamburg, Count della Zonca whose Italian Mediterranean Petroleum Company continues to seek means of taking out the two million tons of oil which it has contracted to buy—all these and others, including Afghans and Brazilians, have shown interest in Persian oil. They look much more like flies round a honey-pot than vultures round a corpse.
