Onstage

The old man tottered into the improvised courtroom at Saltanatabad barracks, seven miles outside Teheran. Pallid, his bony frame trembling beneath two overcoats and a pair of wool pajamas he lurched dramatically to the defendant's bench and lay there on his side, gasping for air, his throat fluttering. He croaked feebly for Coramine (a stimulant) and sipped it from a cup, each lip movement seeming his last.

For all these signs, 74-year-old Mohammed Mossadegh, after 81 days in jail, was in his best fighting trim. As Premier, he had stood off the British Empire from his bedroom; lying languidly on his iron bed, he had dangled and defied coveys of U.S. diplomats; on the rostrum, shaking, sighing and crying, he had stirred street mobs to frenzy. Now he had taken his act to court.

Intermission. The charge against Mossadegh: plotting to overthrow Iran's constitutional government. The crime is punishable by death, but in Iran it is not customary to execute convicted men over 60.

The court convened, and Mossadegh quickly went on the offensive, challenging the military tribunal's competence. Asked to identify himself, he cried, "I am the legal Premier of Iran!" And he soon launched into a filibuster that had everything in it but Huey Long's recipe for potlikker. When the chairman of the five-man court gently suggested that Mossadegh was wandering from the point, he cried: "Kill me! I'll submit."

He accused his court-appointed lawyer, a black-browed young army colonel, of slipping a copy of the defense plan to the court, and he punched the surprised man on the arm. Instantly, the lawyer leaped up, extracted a copy of the Koran from his breast pocket, and on it swore he had done no such thing. By this time Mossadegh was off on another tack, while the lawyer sat stiffly unhappy.

Recesses were social occasions: Mossadegh greeted newsmen as "my friends" and mugged for the photographers. One photographer asked him to pose smoking a cigarette. "I've never smoked before," he said, but he took the cigarette and blew the smoke through his nostrils. "Only animals reject gifts," he explained, grinning.

Pondering. He would lurch back into court and lie with his head down until he decided that it was his turn to talk. "I'll remain in prison until I die," he vowed. "If anyone tries to release me, I'll find a way to commit suicide." "Now, now," soothed the court president. "You're not going to die. Please, just try to talk about the jurisdiction of this court." His lawyer also tried to get him to talk on the issue. Mossadegh screamed: "You're the son of a burnt father."

By the middle of the fourth day, the court had sat for 17 hours, of which 14 hours were pure Mossadegh. On the seventh day, the justices retired to ponder whether they had the right to try him in the first place. They concluded that they did have the right, and returned manfully to face the next assault from Mohammed Mossadegh.

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