RED SHADOW OVER IRAN
Villard, Oswald Garrison
Red Shadow Over Iran By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD NOTHING more alarming has come from Russia, except for the matter of Poland, than the Soviet's move against the Persian people. It is not...
...The upshot was that Persia was pretty well divided between the British Army and the Russian Army, the British holding specially to the airfields and moving down toward the Persian Gulf...
...The Russians insist that their demand and their compelling the Prime Minister to resign is no infringement of Iranian independence...
...The sole charge against him was that he refused to yield to the Russian demand...
...The little country refuses, and then of course you charge it with having broken faith, with having violated the spirit of the mutual good-will treaty, and you force what you want either by compelling a new and favorable government or by war...
...More than that, in the same document they promised that all foreign troops would be out of Persia within six months after the ending of the war...
...The result of this pressure has been the resignation of the Premier...
...Powers Had Promised Integrity Now the Russians are at work with their old technique, which is exactly similar to that utilized by Hitler against Czechoslovakia and Poland...
...Those were such sound reasons and so free from any hostility to Russia that it is hard to understand why, when the war is not yet won, the Soviets should be forcing this issue...
...You sign a treaty of good-will and mutual respect and non-aggression and then you suddenly discover, if you are a big-nation, that there.is a hostile influence working against your government within the boundaries of your little neighbor...
...If the Soviets can get away with this they can look forward to haying their way against any of the smaller peoples whom they desire to dominate or conquer, on the theory that in some curious way these people menace the safety of the most gigantic country on earth...
...The story is this: At the outbreak of the war there were German agents and business men in Iran which would have been invaded had the Germans conquered the Middle East, since it constitutes the high road to India...
...But how can there be independence when a foreign nation can dictate who the Prime Minister shall or shall not be, and what the Government shall do...
...Iran has certainly suffered enough from foreign concessions to be entitled to decide now as a free and independent state whether it should go any further in bargaining away its marvelous natural resources...
...Roosevelt appease Russia at the expense of small nations...
...In that document they stated that their nations were "as one with the Government of Iran in their desire for the maintenance of the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Iran...
...Hard To Understand This army rebuilt or strengthened the railroads, speedily made two fine ports with docks where there had been only open roadsteads, and likewise improved the neighboring Iranian harbor and rendered many other services...
...There is a conflict of evidence as to what happened...
...Now all of this is in direct contradiction of the statement signed by Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt at Teheran on Dec.l, 1943, not yet a year ago...
...It inflamed a portion of the Iranian press and, according to the Russian papers, 25,000 Persians demanded the resignation of the Government in Tabriz alone...
...It used the usual technique of denouncing the Iranian Government and called for the immediate resignation of the Prime Minister Mohammed Said...
...This is a dreadful situation and it gravely menaces our and England's relations with Stalin...
...Others deny that there was any fighting at all...
...How long will Mr...
...Now Russia has suddenly turned upon Iran and demanded more oil concessions for herself...
...It is not unexpected, but it does raise a vital issue the decision on which cannot be long postponed, for both the United States and England are flat-footedly against the present Russian procedure...
...The Iranians then turned to us, although we were not yet in the war, and Mr...
...Gradually you make demands upon the little country for more things than were included in the treaty of amnesty and goodwill...
...At once there is a concerted attack in the press of the big dictator, inspired, of course, since there is no freedom of the press in Russia or Germany...
...They turned over to American officials the constabulary, what was left of the army, the police, the railroad from the gulf to Teheran, the complete management of the finances of the country, the control of public health and numerous other branches of the government, so that we actually had it in our hands...
...The Iranians called us in because they felt that it was their only hope of preventing the absorption of the country by Russia and/or England...
...At once the Russians and the British moved military forces into the country...
...Some Iranians who ought to know assure me that there was serious fighting and that the actual list of casualties has never been given out...
...He himself declared that he withheld consent to the Russian terms because public opinion would not consent to any concessions as long as foreign troops were in Iran, because the economic condition of the world is not clear, because the Washington oil conference left the situation in doubt, and because all Iranian representatives abroad urged that no concessions be granted now...
...Persia means a great deal to the British Government which considers its independence indispensable to the existence of its own empire—it would probably be quite willing to talre over Persia itself...
...Roosevelt obliged by dispatching an army composed of technical troops under the command of a major-general...
Vol. 8 • November 1944 • No. 48
