Caviar for Mossadegh

Each spring, without fail and without regard to political boundaries, the massive female sturgeon of the Caspian Sea points her sluggish body--sometimes 300 years old, 24 feet long and weighing a ton--toward the warmer waters of the Iranian littoral and prepares to lay her eggs there. If she is unlucky, fishermen net her along the way, stun her with clubs, slice open her belly, and scoop out as many as 3,000,000 pearly black eggs. Lightly salted, the sturgeon's roe eventually winds up on some of the best set dining tables of Paris and New York. Price in Manhattan: up to $36 a Ib.

For years, the principal purveyor of this royal delicacy has been Communist Russia. The Kremlin got into Iran's caviar treasure in the '20s by the simple expedient of kidnaping the original White Russian concessionaire and then forcing the weak Teheran government to agree to a joint fisheries company. Once in, the Russians didn't miss an imperialist trick. They never allowed the Iranians to look at the company books, hung on to the chairmanship though it was supposed to rotate annually, and kept the catch for themselves instead of selling it to the highest bidder. All Iran got each year for giving up 100 tons of caviar and 4,000 tons of sturgeon--worth 70 million rials ($2,150,000) in all--was a measly 4,000,000 rials ($120,000).

At the stroke of midnight one night last week, all of this came to an end. Premier Mohammed Mossadegh summoned Soviet Ambassador Ivan Sadchikov, courteously notified him that the 25-year Soviet concession had expired, and firmly rejected a Russian note demanding a ten-year extension. It was hard news for the Communists, who cheered when Mossadegh kicked out another foreign concessionaire, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.

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