Word: mossadegh
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Like most of Asia, in the days before Mossadegh, India lit its lamps and powered its gasoline engines largely with Abadan petroleum. Then Abadan shut down. India, pinched for oil (it had to cut civil air traffic 20%), awakened to the fact that it was refining only about 6% of the oil it consumed...
Full of Beans. For Mossadegh, it was a hero's welcome. The crowd broke uncertainly into the new Iranian Oil Anthem: "Happiness dawned in the east, sorrow came to an end." Refrain: "The year had not elapsed before oil was nationalized. Home of lions-Iran! Iran!" It took Mossadegh's green 1950 DeSoto a full hour to make its way through the crowds to the Shah's Palace four miles away. One ragged, tearful old man trying to show his devotion by sacrificing himself under the car wheels was snatched away by the police...
...young Shah apparently expected Mossadegh to quit: Hadn't he come home emptyhanded? Instead, Mossadegh talked away for 5½ hours, over many cups of tea, describing British stubbornness, U.S. sympathy, Egyptian friendship. He and Premier Nahas Pasha had gotten to be real buddies on his visit to Egypt. The Shah next day had one word to describe the session: "Exhausting." But 72-year-old Mohammed Mossadegh, no longer the fainting wonder, was full of beans...
...days later he appeared before a Parliament in, which his own Nationalist Front has only 8 members out of 136. He held them spellbound, while the galleries cheered, and in the end he got a 90-0 vote of confidence. Afterwards, Opposition Leader Jamal Imami, who talked against Mossadegh but abstained from voting against him, was mobbed outside. The crowd tried to beat him up, overturn his car; police rescued him. As Mossadegh himself emerged, an old merchant named Haji Mohammed Ali Aymaktchi lay down near his car, announced that he was going to slit his own throat...
Before the Hangover. A quickie election, while the Iranian masses are still drunk on the heady wine of nationalism, and before the economic hangover hits them, is almost sure to return Mossadegh to power. The British, who had confidently predicted his downfall, looked glum: once again they had misread the Iranians and their wily old leader...