The Foreign Service Journal, February 2004

trial of Mohammad Mossadegh had begun that day in a heavily guarded court outside the city, so the town was full of foreign journalists. On walls and buildings, signs saying “Americans Go Home” had been painted over with the advent of the military government of General Fazlollah Zahedi, but with the words “still there under the paint, and no one certain that things would not completely change again in this explosive country.” I quoted an observer who characterized the political and economic situation as hav- ing changed from a “hopeless situ- ation to a very bad situation.” Mossadegh’s supporters were now very few and very quiet, “ ... since they value their necks.” But I noted of Mossadegh himself: “wily and emotional, he has pretty much stolen the show in the courtroom.” He would later be sentenced to three years of soli- tary confinement, and would spend the remainder of his years until his death in 1967 under house arrest. My letters reflected the mood of the times. “It goes without say- ing how very important a strong, independent and eco- nomically sound Iran is for the West ... should this country fall behind the Iron Curtain, the age-old Russian dream of control of Middle East oil and ports on the warm water of the south will have been realized.” They reflected, as well, the judgments of someone totally new to Islam and the Middle East, writing to family back home who were even less knowledgeable, about “... the unwillingness of Islam in most Middle East countries to adapt itself somehow to changes in the times, the unwillingness of the leaders to adopt a realistic attitude toward the political, social and economic problems (and they are many) of most Middle East countries.” Temporarily moved from the economic section of the embassy, I was in the offices of the director of a $24 mil- lion annual Point Four program (including a major, DDT- driven anti-malaria program), serving there with the young Ardeshir Zahedi, son of the prime minister, who would eventually serve as ambassador in Washington. Much about the city, I wrote, baffled resident Americans, but nothing so much as the traffic, which “defies description,” with the few traffic lights as exist doing little more than fol- lowing traffic, with “pedestrians blissfully unaware of the dangers facing them.” It was “no place for anyone with a weak heart.” On the streets, bayonet-wielding soldiers manned every corner, with martial law in effect and a cur- few in place from 11 p.m. until 5 in the morning. New to embassy life, I marveled that even with that curfew, the diplomatic social circuit was intense — recording at one point 26 required events in a month. I told my parents that “anyone who says that this diplomatic service is easy work should try it; he’ll soon change his mind.“ A VIP Visit Newly elected Vice President Richard Nixon and wife Pat arrived for a short visit in early December 1953, as part of a worldwide tour. Grateful for the American support the Nixons’ visit symbolized, the Zahedi gov- ernment organized several elabo- rate and glittering receptions for them, including one in the main diplomatic reception room of the foreign ministry — the same room in which I would later live as a hostage. That visit further intensified security on the streets of the cap- ital, which were still somewhat tense, especially around the uni- versity — producing “a chronic source of disturbances for trigger- happy security forces,” I observed. Three students had been killed by police fire in demonstrations against the resumption of diplomatic relations with Britain — broken in the midst of hostilities following oil nationalization. At the university, I found one American who observed he did not feel he could walk freely around the campus — the students being “understandably bitter; the wealth of the country is so tied up with a few families that many of them have little to hope for after they finish school, so they take out their bitterness against the foreign students.” This American shared the sentiments I recorded in my letters that there appeared to be little awareness of the role of the individual citizen in improving his own country. I wrote to my family that “it is always the government that must do something ... and it usually talks big and does nothing, with the result that the masses become dissatisfied, tension increases, riots break out in the streets and the government falls. That has been the pattern in the past and, though the present government gives more hope than its predecessors for change, there is no assurance that the pattern won’t be repeated.” Those sentiments also found frequent expression among the student population. Grant Mouser and I had volun- teered to lead an English-language discussion group at the Iran-American Society, which met twice weekly and inevitably saw heated expressions of the Zahedi regime’s shortcomings and official American complicity in its policies. F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 63 Three days before I was to leave for Japan in 1953, a phone call from Washington informed me I was going to Iran instead.