Stormy Weather

The threatening clouds of Soviet expansion were beginning to precipitate. Last fortnight, as negotiations between Iran and its rebel Soviet-sponsored Azerbaijan province broke down, Azerbaijan's Russian-installed Radio Tabriz declaimed: "We declare war against Iran. . . ." Later Tabriz dispatches explained that poor flying weather postponed the war. Last week Tabriz reported that Teheran troops were attacking Azerbaijan along 150 miles of the Kurdistan front;

All Russian troops are supposed to have left Azerbaijan, but plenty of Russian equipment stayed behind. Rumors persisted that many a Russian in the disputed province had donned an Azerbaijanian uniform.

Meanwhile Columnists Joseph & Stewart Alsop reported: "Intelligence has just reached Washington from Manchuria . . . that among the dead left by the Chinese forces on the battlefield of Szepingkai, a great many were Soviet volunteers."

In both Iran and Manchuria, continued the Alsops, regimes pitted against the Soviet's new imperialism are helpless. "Both," they said, "could reunite their countries ... if they were not faced with the absolute certainty that determined efforts to do so would not be effectively aided by the U.S. and Great Britain, while Soviet aid to the opposition . . . would be greatly increased."

Said Azerbaijan's Premier Jafar Pishevari the following day: "Our country is on a war footing. . . . Russian moral support . . . made it possible for the people to realize a 30-year-old hope. . . ."

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