The Challenger

Hardly had Prime Minister Winston Churchill zoomed back from Moscow to announce that the question of Poland and the Balkans would vex Anglo-Russian relations no more, than those relations suffered a new wrench.* This time it came in Iran--traditionally a prospective Russian Lebensraum, traditionally a very tender spot with Britons. For Iran lies like a massive wedge between British India and British-controlled Iraq. It is also the source of much of Britain's Near Eastern oil.

Oil was the immediate cause of the trouble. Iran's Premier Mohamed Said Maraghei was being briskly boiled in oil last week, and even the U.S. had been spattered with a few hot drops. The fire was lit by Sergei Kavtaradze, Soviet Vice Commissar of Foreign Affairs, who presented Said with a Russian proposal for oil concessions in northern Iran (TIME, Oct. 30). Said said no, but Kavtaradze would not take no for an answer. From Teheran, where he lingered, he denounced the head of Iran's Cabinet. From afar the Russian press echoed his charges that Said was a Russophobe reactionary. Vice Commissar Kavtaradze was also suspected of stirring up Iranians to denounce Said.

Tongue in cheek, Moscow Correspondent Paul Winterton cabled London's News Chronicle: "With that spontaneity which is such a happy feature of the Persians at their best, 20,000 people demonstrated in the streets of Teheran, called for the resignation of the Said Government." There were other demonstrations in the northern section of Iran, occupied by the Red Army since 1941.

Said Must Go. Except in Tabriz, Iranian troops patrolled the streets with armored cars or motorcycles mounting machine guns. In Tabriz, the Red Army simply locked the Iranian garrison in its barracks. Later, a Tass report said Iranian troops in Tabriz had fired on a "peaceful anti-Government demonstration," killed a demonstrator. The Red Army also cut off Iranian grain from the rest of Iran. Cried Kavtaradze and Moscow: Said must go.

Britain and the U.S. backed Premier Said, who had refused them further concessions at the same time that he refused the Russians. From London the BBC beamed the British view to Iranians: "The Iranian Government decided to make no oil concessions until after the war. Sir Reader William Bullard, British Minister, is in close touch with the Iranian Government and he has no objection to their decision." The U.S. was reported to have told the Iranian Government: Iran's decision does not cause the U.S. Government regret or alarm because Iran is an independent country.

A Power Is Born. Cried Moscow's Izvestia: "Phony. . . . Nobody is fighting against the independence of Iran. How can the stay of foreign troops in Iranian territory [be] reconciled with the sovereignty and independence of Iran? The presence of Soviet and British troops is in conformity with a treaty [of 1941], but there are also American troops in Iran without any agreement with the Iranian Government." U.S. troops are there to rush U.S. supplies to the Red Army. But most of this traffic now goes via Murmansk. In effect, Izvestia's statement said that the Soviet Government would no longer honor Stalin's pledge, signed jointly with Roosevelt and Churchill at Teheran last year, to "respect" Iran's "sovereignty and independence." In the course of the dispute, Russia informed Iran that Russia now considers itself "a Middle Eastern power."

By week's end the Russians had also fired a broadside at the late Shah Reza Pahlavi, who managed to get the Red Army out of Iran during an earlier occupation. Carefully uncriticized was Reza's son, young Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, who was well on the way to becoming the King Mihai of Asia's Balkans. The Russians had already hinted to him that he might be able to find a new premier.

*In his November Revolution speech this week, Marshal Stalin declared that "it is not enough to win the war but we must make any future war impossible," that the United Nations must create a special organization "immediately to avert aggressions" in the postwar world.

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