Mediation in Persia ?
By accepting President Truman's offer to send Mr. Averell Harriman to Teheran to discuss the oil dispute, Dr. Mossadaq may have been just in time to keep the Persian Government out of very deep water. By rejecting the findings of the Court of International Justice, and withdrawing from membership of that body, it had embarked on a path of international isolation which should logically lead to Persia's withdrawal from the United Nations. Logic, of course, does not play any ,very large part in current Persian thinking, and Dr. Mossadaq appears to have more or less given up any attempt to direct events. His accept- ance of the American offer of mediation may indeed have come too late to enable him to intervene effectively. Probably he and most other Persians must continue to bank on the belief that the British threat to withdraw from Abadan is bluff ; that in the end the British technicians will agree to work for the Persians and the tanker-masters will agree to sign the Persian form of receipt, or something very like it. There is no reason to suppose that this is the case. The delay in removing technicians from Abadan is due more to the British Government's anxiety to show a scrupulous respect for the text of the Court's ruling than to any hope that some accommodation is still possible with the Persians. The Company is making a gesture by doing its best to keep the oil flowing. The Persians are making this next to impossible by their technique of abuse, interference.and sabotage, which, in the summer heat of the Persian Gulf. must have already made work- ing conditions in Abadan just about intolerable. Naturally, Persian provocation has given strength to the desire in this country to see a " firmer line " taken with the Persians, and Mr. Harriman's intervention would not in itself rule out that possibility, if only somebody could give a concrete meaning to the term. But if we are now obliged to rely on long-term hopes of being able to see the oil industry in Persia working normally again, there is nothing to be said for indulging in short-term heroics.
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