"The Foundations of Peace"

"Continents and oceans are plainly only parts of a whole, seen, as I have seen them, from the air. England and America are parts. Russia and China, Egypt, Syria and Turkey, Iraq and Iran are also parts. And it is inescapable that there can be no peace for any part of the world unless the foundations of peace are made secure throughout all parts of the world."--Wendell Willkie in One World.

Shivering Teheranis called it the coldest spring in living memory. They meant not merely the winds from the mountains; somewhere between Kazvin and the Soviet border the Red Army was backing and wheeling in full combat regalia. No one knew just where it was, how big it was, or what it was doing. But that it was there at all was enough to shake the world's "foundations of peace."

Premier Ahmad Gavam Saltaneh was back from Moscow, where his gentle dickering had yielded no assurances of Russian departure. The March 2 deadline in the Anglo-Russian-Iranian treaty continued to be honored in the breach. Premier Gavam could not defend his country or the world's peace. He waited uneasily for this week's showdown meeting of UNO's Security Council in New York.

The Indiscretions of Ahmadi. Iran's young Shah Mohamed Reza apparently was less cautious than Gavam. War Minister General Sepahbod Amir Ahmadi had an interview with the Shah and then blood-&-thundered to U.S. newsmen that Iranians would fight any overt act of the Russians. Foreign Office officials shook their heads in disapproval. "How silly" said one. "The Russians can be here in one hour." To the question: "Will Iran really fight?" the answer was an Oriental shrug of the shoulders. Two days later, red-faced General Ahmadi repudiated his words, blamed them on a "faulty translation."

Meanwhile, Red Army tanks and planes were a mere 20 miles from Teheran, at Karaj. Armored columns were said to be moving west by night towards Lake Urmia, near the Turkish and Iraq frontiers. But the British (who garrison Iraq) and the Turks (who are fully mobilized) stayed cannily silent. Both were old hands at playing the nerves game.

The Meaning of Friendship. Turkey and Iran were still the biggest gap in the Soviet Union's two-continent super-security system. By exerting pressure for concessions, Russia hoped to get the same kind of "friendly" governments in Ankara and Teheran as she had in Sofia and half a dozen other capitals--governments that would see Russian reason.

A "friendly" government in Teheran, for instance, would not appeal to UNO. At week's end the Russians were reported asking for a token of his cooperation in the form of oil concessions in northern Iran; if Gavam gave in, Moscow might decide that the Red Army's presence was unnecessary. Then Britain and the U.S. would have to decide whether to bring before UNO a charge that Russia had coerced Iran into "friendship." If Iran was a sample, disputes before UNO were likely to partake of the bewildering complexity of the British divorce courts rather than the classic simplicity of the "One World" concept.

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