Mooooo!

Theoretically it was to be the prosecutor's week in court, but the writer, producer, director and star performer was again that wizened old mummer, Mohammed Mossadegh. Hunched over the defense table in Saltanatabad barracks, the deposed Premier of Iran kept up a running commentary on Prosecutor Brigadier General Hussein Azemudeh's attempt to have him convicted of treason. He feigned shock, horror, innocence, fear of assassination, and sleep; he corrected the prosecutor's grammar and syntax, wowed the courtroom crowd with witty ad libs, laughed at the court's most damaging evidence, and finally developed a most economical retort that required no effort at all.

"This man is very cunning!" cried Prosecutor Azemudeh. Mossadegh ruminatively lifted his head and, in the voice of an ailing Guernsey, commented: "Moooooooo!" Azemudeh recited a vast series of crimes committed by Mossadegh against the nation. Said Mossadegh: "Mooooo!" Azemudeh poured scorn and shame on the man who had defied the Shah of Iran. Mossadegh replied: "Moooooo!"

By week's end, Mossadegh was very much in control, the Shah had ordered the prosecution to soft-pedal its language because Mossadegh's huge public following was showing its sympathies, and the government was sorry that it had ever decided to try the old man publicly. Mossadegh vowed to take a whole month in his rebuttal; wearily the court decided to sit once a day instead of twice. In the end, went the gag around Teheran, the five military judges will throw themselves on the mercy of the defendant.

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