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Roger Cohen

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A Crass and Consequential ErrorRoger Cohen
August 7, 2012
Muhammad Mossadegh, the Iranian prime minister overthrown by US and British agents in 1953, was a man who declined a salary, returned gifts, and collected tax arrears from his beloved mother. Frugality was allied to punctiliousness in this droopy-nosed aristocrat who enraged the West by insisting that Iran, not Britain, should own, sell, and profit from Iranian oil. A member of the princely Qajar family, he retained a noblesse-oblige gentility even as he became the symbol of postwar Iranian assertiveness. He fainted, he swooned-and was often pajama-clad. When he saw a hole, he had an irrepressible inclination to dig deeper. High principle trumped judicious compromise too often for Mossadegh to be a successful politician.

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Dimitri Lascaris just returned to Greece from an 11-day journey across Iran in a time of war. While walking the streets of a coastal town in Crete, Dimitri discusses what he learned in Iran, where he thinks the war is heading, and why he came to Crete to continue his coverage of the war.