The violent, hot land of Iran last week headed uncontrollably over the crumbling edge of the abyss, and then, during three wild days, pulled itself back to safety.
When the week began, Mohammed Mossadegh seemed safely on top. The Shah was in flight; the fanatic mullahs' and the stubborn Majlis' opposition was hidden or cowed; the army was a sullen eunuch; the world resigned. Who was there to say him no?
His street supporters celebrated with a carnival of destruction. Communist and Nationalist mobs swarmed deliriously over Teheran's principal squares, pulling down the great bronze statues of the Shah and his father. They opened and denied the Reza Shah's tomb, spat on the Shah's picture, applauded as Foreign Minister Hussein Fatemi cried: "To the gallows" with the young Shah.
The Ambassador's Call. At sundown of the second day, wily old Mossadegh seemed to have all Teheran in his hand. But something was stirring in Teheran that could not yet be measured. Perhaps Mossadegh, unopposed, had gone too far and too fast and frightened the people. Perhaps the Shah's flight forced them at last to decide between monarch and Premier.
Precisely at 6 p.m., U.S. Ambassador Loy Henderson (back the previous day from two months' vacation) mounted the stairs to Mossadegh's bedroom at 109 Kakh Street. Henderson stayed one hour; soon after he left, things began to happen.
What went on up in Mossadegh's bedroom? Henderson began by protesting the stoning of six U.S. citizens' cars that day, and asked assurances that U.S. lives and property would be protected. Otherwise, he would order all American women and children evacuated. That startled Mossadegh. Then the ambassador inquired politely about the legal validity of Mossadegh's regime in view of the Shah's parting decree, in which he fired Mossadegh and named General Falzollah Zahedi in his place. When Henderson quit the room, Mossadegh was firmly convinced that the U.S. was undecided whether to continue to recognize him as Iran's Premier.
Happy to Oblige. Apparently this fitted together with other doubts and misgivings that were gathering in Mossadegh's mind. Shaken, the old man went to the phone and ordered his army and police to drive the rioting Reds off the street. That call, turning the army loose on the most powerful street support he had, was Mossadegh's fatal mistake. The troops were only too happy to oblige; they clubbed the rioters unmercifully and punctuated their thudding gun butts with shouts of "Long live the Shah" and "Death to traitors." Growing bolder, they forced the Reds at bayonet point to cheer the Shah, too. The next morning, the bruised and bitter Tudeh Central Committee proclaimed: "No more aid to Mossadegh, who is a compromising traitor," and the Reds retreated into hiding. He had disappointed them: Mossadegh in their eyes was to have been the Kerensky who preceded them to power. Now, suddenly, their fortunes had changed.