ihe

— ea ROE pe te i

Se 2S SL Ee Se

Buay
“ae Tant,

; seng

Pe stakes they play for in
_ Iran are big—among the
very biggest in the world.

7 . ,
When you are counting your

Sterling ten million at a time,
and your dollar accounts
look like the national budget
Of a fairdsized power, you
don’t stop at an occasional
aSsassination and you don’t
Pause very long over fella-
heen who can’t read or write

and quite often cannot eat,
either.

They don’t, that is.

Who are. they, and what is it
in this Cheerless, squalid, poverty-
Stricken and dried-up country
that makes it a pawn in the game
of international high politics and
high finance?

They are the oil companies—
the giant: corporations of New

ork and the City of London who
Pump the black gold out of the
Soil of Iran, Arabia and Iraq,
Plpe it thousands of miles across
the deserts, refine and crack it in
Vast Seashore plants, and ship it
in their tanker fleets to every
Corner of the globe.

This is Big Business indeed.

he profits are counted by the
Million. The power that flows
from those profits is immense.
And woe betide anyone who steps
™m the way,

Just consider what is involved.

Persia — tran — is a country
Which floats on vast underground
akes of oil, said to be among the
Nehest in the world. She has
Sl, still untapped, in the north,
Rear the Soviet frontier.

_ She has it in the southwest,
“land from the Persian Gulf.

It is here, over 100,000 square
Miles of desert, scrub and rocky
foothills, that the Anglo-Iranian

a Company, of Britannic House,
~°ndon, has its concession, dat-
"8 from 1901.

Oday it pumps 30 million tons

Oil yearly from the ground,

S it down the pipes to refin-

S and storage tanks on the
*tsian Gulf.

th t Abadan the company owns

® largest refinery in the world.

frig,

es °wns, too, 140 tankers to take

© oil to its markets in Britain,
1 Tobe, the United States and the
ar Mast,
{ft is hinted that if Iran na-

Honalizes her huge oil industry

f

. cannot get the tankers, With--

nkers she will have oceans
on her hands and no means
Shipping it to the customers.
ee knows, there may be
ey Customers, with their own
"Ps, for Persian oil?)
Anglo-Tranian employ

of oi}

64,000

@® The British-zovernment
controlled Anglo -Iranian
Oil Company pumped $114
million in oil profits out
of Iran last year. But for
the company’s 64,000 work-
ers wages are scandalous-
ly low and living condi-
tions appalling, facts borne
out by the infant mortality
rate—500 deaths in every
1,000 births.

.

The war

for

BY
DEREK
KARTUN

oil

workers in their Persian enter-

prises. . ,
And Anglo-Iranian makes
money. Last year it was £38

million (approximately $114 mil-
lion) in profits. Another way of
saying it is that 131 percent was
earned on the share capital.

The assets are listed at £73 mil-
lion (approximately $219 million).
They are worth vastly more than
that.

Four shillings (77 cents) a ton
is paid yearly to the Iranian gov-
ernment, the result of the last
agreement, made in 1983.

And thereby hangs a tale.

e

The concession had originally

been granted, before the First

World War, to a private oil com-
pany.

It was denounced in 1921, and
again in 1932, by the Persians.
They denounced it because Persia
itself got only a miserable pit-
tance for her oil. And thus was
it understood and passionately
resented by the whole population.

There were . demonstrations,
angry speeches, violence. Only
when the British Navy had sent
its cruisers to steam casually up
the Persian Gulf late in 1932, did
the Shah see things the way
London saw them, and sign.

He was no longer negotiating
with a private company, however.
For a £2 million ($6 million) gov-
ernment investment in the com-

pany in 1914 had given the Brit-
ish government a major interest.
Thus, the Shah discovered to his
astonishment that a foreign
power actually ‘owned the major
industry of Persia,

If the Persians are denouncing
the agreement again today it is
scarcely surprising.

e

Tran has never grown rich on
her, oil. The fellaheen—the un-
utterably poor peasantry—live in
never-ending misery. The condi-
tions of the oilfield workers are
appalling. :

Rakhoda Zamani, Iranian
workers’ delegate to the United
Nations, told that body last No-
vember that labor conditions were

_ The slave labor slan

om the Prisoner’s free disposal. It

on .., Sent home, saved up, spent

oe xtra food, or spent at the

ee ne shop on chocolate, cigar-

other White bread, perfume, and
Small luxuries. *

Mount et 18 good. Both on the
by nts and varieties prescribed

© regulations, and on the
‘Say "rance of the food when I

Cooked and served, the

Siang. °° Sufficient. But the Rus-

thes, like plenty of food, and

“Dhy., People are working hard at
Mo ‘aad Work; and I learned that

°f' them do buy extra food,
tep * white: bread or extra but-
dig,... Xtra or more attractive
Of There are three ranges

“Suan SUPPlied by the kitchens,

ang hteed minimum,” “hospital

The Sliday,” and “extras.”

‘Per? 18 a small hospital, and

agg cament Medical officers look
eee alls}
“Nee, Sent

Ut serious cases, which
elsewhere. The general
“nig, Standards are said to be
© same as “outside.”

eed minimum seemed to _

Prisoners can write and receive
as many. letters, and have as
many visits, as they like. They
may see the governor personally
with their. complaints, or they
may make a complaint to him in

writing, which he must answer _

within three days. If they prefer
to complain to the ministry which

‘looks after them, their letter must

be forwarded by the governor to
the ministry unopened, and the
ministry must answer.

Once a week, an official of the
attorney general’s office visits
the camp to see that all the regu-
lations are properly observed, and
that no one is being illegally de-
tained. ‘ Re ek a

The only specific prohibitions
that I could discover were against
alcohol, drugs, cutting instru-
ments and playing cards. ‘

The prisoners looked a mixed
lot; most of them looked -like
average citizens, one.or two look-
ed “tough”, scarcely one looked
really surly or resentful, and all
said “Good day” to the governor

in a friendly and unembarrassed
fashion as we passed. As they
had lost their civil rights for the
time, they could not call him
“comrade” themselves; the. word
was “citizen.” Nor could they ex-
ercise that civil right which con-
sisted in signing the Stockholm
peace petition.

There is no automatic system
of remission, but every case is
checked over frequently to see
whether conduct merits a slice of
say, six months off the sentence.
(This may happen more than
once.) There is also a system
whereby satisfactory prisoners
can be released on condition that
‘they live in a particular town and
work in a particular factory for

‘the rest of their sentence; in

those cases, they are wholly free
of all restrictions so long as they
remain at their work.

Nor is the ministry neglectful
of other means of getting people
back into normal society. iAt
about the time of my visit it had
been decided that every women

der —

prisoner with children under 14
should be released at once, unless
she had committed some excep-
tionally serious crime, as it was
held important to give children
the benefit of their parents’ pres-
ence in the home, As a result of
this decision, 80 of the 300 women

in the camp were about to return
to their families.

“After care” is not important
in a country where there is al-
ways work to be had; but the
camp authorities do .keep in
touch with discharged prisoners,
and help if necessary. Recidivism
is extremely low. . Ata” ‘

My whole general impression
was that the camp was run with
humanity and intelligence; that
life was dull and hard, but tol-
erable, and far better than life
is for millions of “free” men in
Some other countries; and that
the Soviet Union is curing crime
quicker than most other _coun-
tries, vl wine

scandalous, trade union rights
were absent (the workers can join
a company union if they wish).
Mass firings for genuine union
activity were common.

There was martial law in the
oil districts, said Zamani. Wages
were at starvation level.

He added that he fully expected
to be shot for saying these things
when he returned to Iran

Thus, the mass of the Iranian
people hate the company and hate
Britain. They look longingly
across their northern frontier to
where they know there is free-
dom and decency for the under-
dog. e

As they look to the Soviet
Union, the company, which is the
British government, which is im-
perialism, stiffens with horror and
rushes to Teheran with new pro-
posals to win over Iran’s leading
families with just a little more of
the oil profits.

But the company’s Problems do
not end there.

.

A  100,000-square-mile conces-
sion, with other known oil areas
nearby, can be smelt a long, long
Way away—as far away as New
York City, in fact.

Already the Americans are
entrenched in the Middle East in
a big way.

They exploit the great oilfields
of nearby Arabia. They have in-
terests in Iraq. They have a con-
cession on Bahrein Island in the
Persian Gulf. They have inter-
ests in Anglo-Iranian itself. And
they are big customers for Anglo-
Iranian products.

The Americans want more
Middle East oil because there is
money in it and because they are
anxious to preserve their own
domestic stocks for use in war.

They have economic experts, a
military mission, a powerful dip-
lomatic staff in Teheran. They
were prospecting for oil on Rus-
sia’s very borders until Moscow
reminded Iran of her undertaking
to forbid such combined prospect-
ing-spying expeditions. They
ceased. °

America used Teheran Radio to
relay Voice of America broadcasts
against the Soviet Union, until
another polite reminder from

Moscow to Teheran put a stop .
Bert is

And all the while behind the
Scenes, the real war, the war for
oil, has continued.

There have been post-war

‘agreements by Britain, France

and the U.S., which have weaken-
ed Britain to the advantage of
the U.S.

There have been military con-
sultations (and sometimes no con-
Sultation at all) to bring Ameri-
can fleets and bomber bases into
the area,

Today Iran is regarded not
only as an oilfield. The country
is looked upon as a side-door to

Russia: Thus her importance is
enormously enhanced for the
Western powers.

&

In its way, this unhappy coun-
try is the perfect picture of @
victim: of imperialism in the
fifties: a common base against
socialism, but at the same time
the scene of bitter, cut-throat
rivalry.

Do the people of Iran demand
nationalization? Martial law is
clamped upon them. r

Did. the popular Tudeh party
head the demands for bread and
democracy? It was outlawed.

The real originators of the vi-
olent events in Iran are not the
religious fanatics. Nor are they
the courageous democrats.

They are the men whose for-
tunes are floated on oil, who
want bases against Russia, and
who give never a thought to the
misery and the violence upon
which these ambitions are built.

-PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 8, 1951 — PAGE 5