Hero's Return

Kids on bikes and men in loudspeaker-equipped trucks toured Teheran urging everyone to get on one of the government's 150 free buses and go out to the airport. Mossadegh was coming home.

As the plane taxied up to the line, the crowd surged past the police line, shoving the dignitaries perilously close to the still-whirling propellers. The scene around the plane's unopened door became a madhouse of shouting ministers and mullahs. One Majlis leader was whacked across the mouth with a large wet floral wreath. Newly appointed U.S. Ambassador Loy Henderson, out to say hello to Mossadegh, was caught in the mob at the airport, had his pockets picked (his wallet was later returned intact), but never got to speak to the pallidly beaming Premier.

Full of Beans. For Mossadegh, it was a hero's welcome. The crowd broke uncertainly into the new Iranian Oil Anthem: "Happiness dawned in the east, sorrow came to an end." Refrain: "The year had not elapsed before oil was nationalized. Home of lions--Iran! Iran!" It took Mossadegh's green 1950 DeSoto a full hour to make its way through the crowds to the Shah's Palace four miles away. One ragged, tearful old man trying to show his devotion by sacrificing himself under the car wheels was snatched away by the police.

The young Shah apparently expected Mossadegh to quit: Hadn't he come home emptyhanded? Instead, Mossadegh talked away for 5 1/2 hours, over many cups of tea, describing British stubbornness, U.S. sympathy, Egyptian friendship. He and Premier Nahas Pasha had gotten to be real buddies on his visit to Egypt. The Shah next day had one word to describe the session: "Exhausting." But 72-year-old Mohammed Mossadegh, no longer the fainting wonder, was full of beans.

He wanted an election right now (his enemies in Parliament wanted to postpone it until Dec. 18, hoping to bring him down). Two days later he appeared before a Parliament in, which his own Nationalist Front has only 8 members out of 136. He held them spellbound, while the galleries cheered, and in the end he got a 90-0 vote of confidence. Afterwards, Opposition Leader Jamal Imami, who talked against Mossadegh but abstained from voting against him, was mobbed outside. The crowd tried to beat him up, overturn his car; police rescued him. As Mossadegh himself emerged, an old merchant named Haji Mohammed Ali Aymaktchi lay down near his car, announced that he was going to slit his own throat as a human sacrifice to the great Mossadegh. Haji was led away, protesting at the lack of patriotic feeling in the police.

Before the Hangover. A quickie election, while the Iranian masses are still drunk on the heady wine of nationalism, and before the economic hangover hits them, is almost sure to return Mossadegh to power. The British, who had confidently predicted his downfall, looked glum: once again they had misread the Iranians and their wily old leader.

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