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In 1928, complaining that the elections were rigged (they were), Mossadeq retired to his farm holdings in Ahmabad, west of Teheran, stayed out of politics for 13 years. His health grew worse. In 1930 he went to Berlin for medical treatment, also consulted a psychiatrist about his worsening nervous condition. The psychiatrist was greatly interested in this odd case, but Mossadeq refused to continue seeing him.
In 1940 Reza Shah (the present Shah's father) took belated revenge on his old enemy. On a trumped-up charge, secret police arrested Mossadeq in his garden. When his favorite daughter, Khadijeh, then 17, heard the news, she suffered a nervous breakdown, is still in a sanitarium in Switzerland. (The Premier bursts into tears whenever her name is mentioned.)
When he was released (due to intercession by the crown prince) after 4½ months in a basement cell, Mossadeq was unable to walk. He made a partial physical recovery, but psychologically, close associates say, he still bears the injuries of his imprisonment.
Nine Men in the Cloakroom. In 1940 British and Russian troops occupied Iran. Mossadeq's alien-baiting became more popular than ever. In 1944 he put through a bill forbidding the government to grant an oil concession to anyone without legislative permission. Since this was aimed at the Russians, who were trying to extract an oil concession in northern Iran, the Iranian Communists called Mossadeq a British agent. He never got over the insult.
When the Russians occupied Azerbaijan, Mohammed Mossadeq was in the front row of those calling for their expulsion. After the U.N. forced the Russians to evacuate, he turned his attention to his old enemy, the British. He still opposed any pro-Russian gestures, like Premier AH Razmara's $20 million trade treaty with Moscow, but Red expansion worried him far less than British exploitation of Iran's oil.
An extremely shrewd cloakroom politician, Mossadeq set to work forming a political instrument of his own. With eight other deputies from Teheran, he founded the National Front Party. Incredible as it might seem by Western standards, these nine men were able, in a matter of months, to control Iran's 136-member Parliament. They could do it because Mossadeq is one of the few men in Iran who know or care anything about political organization. Except for the Communists, there are no political parties in Iran; most politicians are merely after all they can get by and for themselves.
Three weeks after moderate Premier Ali Razmara was assassinated last March by a member of the extremist Fadayan Islam, the old dissenter got his unconditional nationalization program through Parliament by unanimous vote. He was asked by Parliament to be Prime Minister. Though "sick and old," he accepted, bowing, as he said, to the demands of the majority.
How Bad Are the British? Mossadeq stands on a single plank: oil nationalization. That issue had become the focal point of every political passion, every instinct of discontent in the country. How sound an issue does Mossadeq have against the British?