NEAR EAST: Two Mohammeds

As the British Foreign Office looked benevolently on, two countries of the Middle East acquired new rulers last week. In neither case had the British officially played kingmakers, but in both cases they had done yeoman work behind the scenes. They were very well satisfied with the results.

On the Air. In his summer palace outside Teheran, tough old Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran listened intently to his radio. In London a BBC announcer was reading a famous Persian ballad, and through the spitting of static the Shah could hear an old story: how in the Middle Ages a heroic blacksmith named Kahveh killed a Persian tyrant. The poem ended, the announcer asked: “Where is Kahveh today?”

After the broadcast the Shah sent a messenger to Britain’s whip-smart Minister Sir Reader William Bullard. The gist of his message: “What do I do now?” The answer, polite but inflexible, was what the Shah expected. Getting into his limousine, he drove to town. There he left a letter with his brand-new Prime Minister Ali Feroughi. Then he drove south, 200 miles to Isfahan.

Next day a special session of Iran’s pliant Parliament cheered at the news that Boss Reza had abdicated “for reasons of health.” Parliament promptly sat his eldest son, 21-year-old Mohammed Shah Pahlavi, on the throne.

Reza, a choleric old man, admitting officially to 65 years, probably closer to 75, had for 16 years fought to keep control of Iran. Now he well knew that, beaten by the British and Russians, he could not deal with the domestic turmoil that his defeat would produce. By abdicating he at least saw his son to the throne.

Mohammed Shah. As Iran’s young Shah came to power 20,000 Russian troops were camped outside Teheran, redding up their tanks for a triumphal entry into the city. Fraternizing with them in sign language were the men of a British brigade, also ready to march in.

Departing in Iranian Army trucks and carriages of the Trans Iranian Railway were the men whose presence had set off the brief Iranian war: Axis diplomats en route to Berlin and Rome, and Axis technicians en route to internment camps in India. The new Shah would have new international friends.

The young Shah faced more disturbing changes at home. Iran’s tribesmen, whose tradition leans as much to polite banditry as it does to husbandry, knew that Reza’s Army had been captured and his tiny Navy sunk. The Lure, the Tangistani, the Bakhtiaris the Kamseh and the Khashgais had a long score to settle. Reza had stopped their raids and ambushes, imprisoned or killed their chiefs, forced them to live in villages, made them wear hats. Many a tribesman hoped that with a new Shah the good old days of unguarded roads and no punitive expeditions might return.

Even the fat comfortable merchants of Teheran felt some of the same muted excitement. They knew the old Shah as a cantankerous man with an unpredictable temper, given to seizing land, imposing high taxes, throwing honest but dissenting businessmen into the big prison on the Ghulek Road north of Teheran. The prison was a poor place to live, all too good a place to die. Under Mohammed, the merchants of Teheran hoped, things might be different.

The young Shah who will have to cope with these stirrings was educated in Switzerland and graduated by the Teheran military academy. Like most Oriental princelings he has the reputation of liking females and a passion for driving his license-less sports Bugatti as fast as it will go.

His marriage to Princess Fawziya, sister of Egypt’s King Farouk, was celebrated by a fabulous wedding in 1939, which lasted five weeks, began in Cairo and ended in Teheran. During it a knock-down fight between his father and his bride’s mother broke up the celebration. Queen Nazli of Egypt wanted the dowry salted away in the National Bank of Egypt, but Reza would have none of it. In a huff the Queen left the nuptials flat, and Reza had all the triumphal arches in Teheran torn down. The dowry stayed in Iran.

From his first acts as Shah, it looked as though Mohammed would be a very different kind of ruler from his prickly father. Within two days he had declared for “closest collaboration” with Britain and Russia, announced that all his father’s fortune would be turned back to the State. A whole slateful of reforms followed. Political prisoners were freed, the budget and taxes reduced. The beginning of his reign looked fine, where it would end nobody knew.

President Mohammed. In Syria last week Free French General Georges Catroux declared that France’s mandate was over, that Syria henceforth would be an independent republic. Named by the Free French as the new republic’s first President was a 55-year-old jurist, Mohammed Tageddine el Hassani.

Before President Mohammed, as he picked Syria’s first Cabinet, was a problem of another kind from that which beset Iran’s Mohammed. No European powers were at the moment threatening his new republic, but there was plenty of dissatisfaction at home. For five years moonfaced, religious Mohammed el Hassani had haunted Paris, trying to be appointed Governor of Syria. His bowing and scraping to the French did not make him popular, particularly with Syria’s ardent nationalists. Syrians last week looked for plenty of squalls as he tried to set up his Government.