Persia's Rebuff
It must have been with the sense of liberation with which a victim brings his blackmailer to court that the White House published President Eisenhower's letter to Dr. Mossadek. Not only did the American President refuse the Persian Prime Minister's request for economic aid, he laid a ghost which has haunted Western diplomacy since the cold war began. The United States, with the War of Independence less than two hundred years behind it, and Indo-China before it, has tended to cast the balance of its sympathies with the small nations against the Imperial Powers. Thus, it was enough for Dr. Mossadek to offend in the name of nationalism. With one blow, he brought on one of the periodic tensions within the Western alliance and paralysed his opponents. Whenever the United States faltered in its doubt, he had only to argue that sanctions would mean economic chaos and chaos would mean Communism, to plunge the dagger still deeper in the State Department's Achilles Heel. There was always an answer; but it was not until June 29th that Washington found the courage to give it. It is, in effect, that the remedy for Persia's economic troubles is in the hands of the Persians themselves, and that Dr. Mossadek has as much to lose as President Eisenhower if Persia goes Communist. The President said that unless Persia helped herself, the American taxpayer could not be expected to help her. Who, after all, cut off the oil revenue ? If this had been said two years ago, subsequent events in Cairo, as well as in Teheran, might have been different. But that it should have been said at all is a minor triumph.
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