Seconds Out of the Ring

Abstract

Monday 30 April was a day that imparted an altered tone to the direction of national policy in both London and Tehran. For the first time in 1951 the British Cabinet’s discussion of Persia was conducted under the brisk chairmanship of the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, who had just emerged from hospital. And Mohammad Mossadegh made his first broadcast, evocative rather than informative, to the Persian people as their new Prime Minister. In neither capital was the change of course immediate or complete. Even in a hospital bed Attlee had been a politician to reckon with and Mossadegh, as nationalist leader and chairman of the Majlis oil committee, had fascinated not merely his predecessor, but also the Shah into apprehensive regard for his views.

We on the spot were exasperated by the apparent lack of dash in the military planning, controlled as it was by the overstaffed HQ in the Canal Zone (‘Red Flannel Alley’).

McKaig¹