IRAN: Phone Call

The Iranian protocol officer who deals with the Russians in Teheran felt sure he recognized the voice at the other end of the phone line. The caller said that he was the Soviet embassy’s political officer. “You should know,” he went on, “that our ambassador attempted suicide.” Then the line went dead. The protocol officer, still convinced it was the voice of the Soviet political officer with whom he had talked dozens of times, phoned back. But the political officer denied making the call, denied the suicide story as well, hung up. In spite of the denials, the report quickly spread all over Teheran last week, for if there was a diplomat with cause to be upset by life’s inscrutable tricks, it was Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Lavrentiev, 49. When he went to Belgrade as ambassador in 1946, Marshal Tito was the prize exhibit in the Kremlin’s gallery of satellite chiefs, and Diplomat Lavrentiev was in a cushy spot. Then Tito made his break with the Kremlin. (Shortly before the break, a brash Yugoslav diplomat asked Foreign Minister Molotov: “Why have you sent us such a stupid ambassador?” Replied Molotov: “Lavrentiev may be stupid, but he is a very good Bolshevik.”) When Lavrentiev came to Iran as ambassador only five weeks ago, the Communists were riding high, and Moscow seemed on the way to gobbling up a fresh satellite. But then came the anti-Mossadegh uprising. The Communist Tudeh was put to flight, and the returning Shah had not even deigned to say a word to the Soviet ambassador at the airport.

Repeatedly, Teheran diplomats phoned the Russian embassy to check the rumor of Lavrentiev’s attempt at suicide. First they got only the brushoff, then the embassy was a little more talkative: the ambassador was very ill and could not be disturbed. “He has suffered a heart attack, like any other man,” explained an embassy spokesman. But the curious were not at all satisfied. Teheran newspapers put their untrammeled imaginations to bear, with varied results: MVD men had shot the ambassador when he tried to flee to the U.S. embassy; the ambassador had shot himself; the ambassador had tried to do himself in with a poisoned cup of tea. The embassy press attache issued a statement calling all the reports “tendentious, mendacious and I don’t know what,” then clammed up. The gates of the embassy slammed shut, leaving the world outside to wonder when—and if—it would ever see Anatoly Lavrentiev again.