Word: gailani
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When Super-Nationalist Seyid Rashid El-Gailani this month took the Iraqi Premiership by coup d'état (TIME, April 21), Britain's great fear was that the new Government would let Axis fifth columnists tamper with the Mosul-Haifa pipeline, through which flows part of Britain's oil. If El-Gailani had had any such ideas, the British moved too fast for him. Into Basra harbor last week unexpectedly steamed a British transport and unloaded British Imperial troops, probably from East Africa...
...British-Iraqi Treaty such an action is perfectly permissible "in the event of the imminent threat of war," and Premier El-Gailani, who had officially come out for the treaty (perhaps without thinking the British could spare the troops), knew it. Best move he could think of was to send a pro-British staff officer hastily to welcome the British commander...
Fulminating in Basra, Prince Abdul IIlah's first thought was to appeal to the benevolently watchful British Government. To all Iraq, and most particularly London and Cairo, the Regent broadcast word that El-Gailani and a small group of Army officers had been seduced by Axis fifth columnists,* were trying to separate Britain from 4,000,000 tons of oil per annum and the all-important friendship of the Arab world...
Prompt was Couper El-Gailani's reply...
...week's end all was desperately tense along the Tigris and Euphrates. In Trans-Jordan's capital city of Amman, Prince Abdul Illah sulked, conferred with General Nuri Es-Said. In Bagdad, El-Gailani played a close-to-the-chest hand of international poker, King Feisal played in the palace gardens beside the Tigris, Sherif Sharaf read the Koran. In London a weary Foreign Office profanely hoped that, since Britain could spare none of her armed forces to police Iraq, a diplomatic miracle might come to pass in the able brain of Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, the new Ambassador...