In Washington at a somber meeting of the National Security Council, Secretary of State Dulles predicted that Iran would soon be a dictatorship under Mossadegh, which would be followed by a communist takeover. “Not only would the free world be deprived of the enormous assets represented by Iranian oil production and reserves,” Dulles said, “but the Russians would secure these assets and thus henceforth be free of any anxiety about their petroleum resources. Worse still…if Iran succumbed to the Communists there was little doubt that in short order the other areas of the Middle East, with some 60
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