Word: mossadeq
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Braced by a policeman's arm, Iran's Premier Mohammed Mossadeq tottered from the conference room in Teheran's Saheb Gharanieh Palace. To waiting newsmen he gasped: "No result-it's all over." Behind him trailed the U.S.'s W. Averell Harriman, tired and glum, and Britain's chief negotiator, Richard Stokes, who said: "I have no alternative but to regard the talks as suspended and to go home...
Brisk Businessman Stokes made a final offer: a businesslike partnership, in which profits would be split fifty-fifty, but with British technicians left in charge of the Abadan refinery. Anglophobe Mossadeq agreed to a British boss for the British staff; he balked over Iranians taking orders from Britons. "But you can't run a show that way," cried Stokes. "You can only have one boss." Mossadeq rejected the argument with his favorite French phrase: "Tant pis" (tough luck...
...flow of revenue which accounts for 43% of the Iranian national budget. The British hoped such economic blows would compel a change of heart, perhaps through a change of government. But there was an unpleasant prospect in this plan: a Red-led regime and economic chaos might replace Mossadeq. The septuagenarian Premier himself clung desperately to a belief that Allah, or perhaps the U.S., would somehow retrieve the situation...
Amiable Negotiator Stokes, whose nickname is "Slap & Tickle Dick," was not tickled. He snapped: "I am not a great believer in bargaining." Still, Mediator Harriman persevered. He saw the young Shah, who is reasonable but ineffectual. The Shah himself tried to conciliate Mossadeq, who finally blew up, said: "Do you want me to resign?" There it was; the Shah had to back down. The fact was that the oil dispute, which stretched back 20 years, had become for Iranians a cause beyond common sense. They desperately needed British technicians, and they could not possibly get along without British marketing...
...charged through Teheran's streets to the Shah Mosque, knifing six policemen on the way, shouting: "Stokes, take your proposal to the grave with you." Mullah Kashani, spiritual leader of the terrorists, unblinkingly told Stokes, who came to pay a call: "Tell the British government that if Dr. Mossadeq deviates one iota from oil nationalization, the Iranian people will dispatch him to the next world...