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Iran remains a precarious outpost. The bloody July revolution in neighboring Iraq sent an apprehensive shudder through Iran's top thousand families and made them more receptive to the Shah's reforms. Though Iran is a Moslem nation, its people are not Arab, and the Shah is thus insulated from the Nasser virus. The Soviet Union, through pudgy Ambassador Nikolai Pegov, has lately purred friendship and slyly supported Iran's claim to Britain's oil-rich Bahrein Island. The Soviet Union sent its dancers and acrobats, sponsored joint Russian-Iranian projects such as locust control on the border, even promised junketing President Kliment Voroshilov would come to Teheran next month in repayment for the Shah's 1956 visit to Moscow. But all Iranians remember Stalin's attempt to grab Azerbaijan in the north after World War II.
Backhanded Tribute
The Soviet campaign of sweetness and light changed abruptly to the hurtling of thunderbolts a month ago. The grounds: that Iran was negotiating a bilateral defense agreement with the U.S. Yet this agreement has been in the works for months. In Moscow, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko handed the Iranian ambassador a stiff note warning of the danger of Iran's being involved in the "military adventures" of foreign circles." Voroshilov's visit was abruptly canceled; Ambassador Pegov stopped flashing his gold-toothed smile and packed for the trip home. The Soviet radio, in Persian language broadcasts, cried that "American warmongers will be masters of the country," and painted a gruesome picture of Iranians living in mud huts, forced to eat grass, date seeds and locusts because "everyone knows that the policy of militarizing the country is one of the main reasons for difficult living conditions."
But the Soviet radio stopped short of attacking the Shah, a backhanded tribute to his popularity. A brooding, impulsive, often irritable man, the Shah at 39 is the one unifying force in the nation. Some of his supporters wish he were more like his father, the decisive, brusque Reza Shah "the Great," who rose from army noncom to the throne of the King of Kings and who showed his displeasure immediately, as when he once dragged a losing jockey from his horse and publicly kicked him in the belly. The young Shah knows that Iran needs a strong, tough hand like his father's, but he cannot bring himself to behave that way. He used to be sensitive to the fact that though his title was old, his dynasty had begun only with his father. But increasingly the Shah has shown a self-confidence to match his character and intelligence.
Educated in Switzerland, emotionally as well as intellectually committed to the West, the Shah is often critical of U.S. policy. He told a TIME correspondent last week: "You say, for example, that we cannot handle military electronic equipment, but if you had started training us four or five years ago, we could handle it now. If you fail to see what we need, you will lose a fantastic opportunity and may be regret it bitterly later on." Iran risked Soviet anger to sign a defense agreement with the U.S., and the Shah, like most of his countrymen, cannot understand John Foster Dulles' explanations that it must be an "agreement" not a treaty.
Heirless Throne