MIDDLE EAST: Of Mobs & Monarchs

“In a few years time,” King Farouk once remarked, “there will be only five kings in the world—the King of England and the four kings in a pack of cards.”

In Cairo last week an ambitious Egyptian general seized the royal palace and gave His Majesty King Farouk exactly six hours to abdicate his throne and clear out of Egypt for good. A thousand miles away, in poverty-stricken Iran, Communists and Nationalist mobs forced the Shah of Shahs to cringe in his lovely palace and give over to Mohammed Mossadegh absolute power over the Iranian army. “Mossy,” as he is known in the English-speaking press, got his old job back as Premier (see below).

In the oil-rich deserts and teeming cities where Africa, Asia and Europe converge, revolution, nourished by nationalism and by the slow wrath of miserable peasants, threatened to whisk away all forms and institutions that lack roots in the Middle East’s history. Most in danger were the quasi-constitutional monarchies cultivated in the Middle East by British imperialism. They have all the trappings of democracy but little of its spirit. Middle Eastern parliaments represent the ruling classes, but not the ruled; “public opinion” is manipulated, law courts too often protect the rich against the wretched; taxation is designed to promote the greatest happiness of the smallest number; the streets can riot but not rule.

While Britain was strong, the monarchies were safe. Now that European nations no longer pay the piper in the Middle East, the monarchs have been able to survive only on two conditions: 1) that their personally loyal armies keep order and discipline in lands where disorder is routine; 2) that the rulers show themselves willing and able to exact concessions from the colonial powers.

Farouk and the Shah, both 32-year-olds, had failed on both counts. Both intervened to save their countries from nationalist fanatics, whose extremism threatened civil war. But Farouk’s interventions, though courageous, were fitful; the Shah’s too timid. Farouk, famed for yachts, gambling and women, lost his popular support to the corrupt Wafd Party; he antagonized his army by failing to clean out the extortionists in his own palace.

Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, Farouk’s ex-brother-in-law,* is a nice liberal young man, who likes to call himself a “working monarch.” He owes his throne to his father. Reza Shah Pahlevi, a mighty man who rose from sergeant to emperor. (The British confirmed Reza’s kingship after World War I, but broke him in World War II.) The young Shah’s sensitivity over his family’s short claim to royal legitimacy helps render him indecisive.

Now that Mossadegh, the lachrymose Lion of Abadan, controls the Iranian army, as well as the Teheran mobs, the Shah is virtually a prisoner, whom Mossadegh could easily, but probably will not, overthrow.

Last week’s revolutions in both troubled nations had left real power where it always had been: with the bigger battalions. In Cairo—city of mosques, millionaires’ clubs and slums—power lay with the army; in Teheran it lay with the mob. Yet neither group was strong enough to rule alone. To give Egypt enduring government, the army needed popular support. Iran’s mob, the power behind Mossadegh, needed even more urgently the support of the Iranian army. To fuse and discipline army and mob was a task for no one less than another Kemal Ata-türk, whose strong rule made Turkey modern and democratic in one generation. No such towering figure has yet appeared in Egypt or Iran.

*He married and divorced raven-haired Empress Fawzia, Farouk’s beautiful younger sister. She is now married to Ismail Shirene Bey. Farouk’s attempt to make his brother-in-law War Minister was the final spark that set off last week’s army revolt.