Five Men in a Jeep

It happened near Kazvin, about 90 miles northwest of Teheran, one day last week. Teheran's official version: a Red Army officer and his jeepload of four machine gunners halted the commander of an Iranian force, speeding to combat a Communist-inspired uprising in Azerbaijan province. The Russian ordered the four Iranian battalions to turn back, "otherwise he would be obliged to use the machine guns."

Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov met the Iranian Ambassador in Moscow and expressed surprise at reports of such goings-on by Red Army troops.

In London, before the House of Commons, Anthony Eden bluntly advised the Soviet Union to "remove suspicion" by letting Iranian troops pass.

From Washington went notes to Moscow and London, proposing that the armed forces of the Big Three be entirely with drawn from Iran by Jan. 1. The U.S. note contained an extraordinary paragraph reminding Moscow that small nations would trust the Big Five on UNO's Security Council only if the Big Five behaved themselves.

Tiny, frail, Iranian Ambassador Hussein Ala had successfully pleaded with State Secretary James F. Byrnes for immediate U.S. action to protect Iran's sovereignty.

The Ambassador quoted a plaintive verse from Persia's 14th-Century poet, Shams edDin Muhammad, known as "Hafiz":

Today, when I am longing for thee, grant me a favor!

Tomorrow when I am turned to dust, of what avail the tears of repentance?

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