Word: akbar
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After declaring three days of mourning, President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Iran's spiritual leader, the Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, flew to the area to supervise relief operations. Allocating $14 million from a strapped treasury for disaster relief, Ayatullah Khamenei described the catastrophe as a "divine test" and appealed to survivors to "pass this test with pride through patience, endeavor, cooperation...
Henry, good-humored and alert, is not so very different from Akbar, the smart-alecky mujahedin boy who in the battle zone of Afghanistan grew closer to his comrades than to his father. In Henry's insular world, his homies are his only family. It is his enemies who keep changing. Despite designer sneakers and all the food he needs, Henry is far poorer than Akbar. He has no cause, no purpose to his fighting, no dream of redemption in another life...
Indirectly, of course, Tehran gets a boost. Settlements of this sort will help President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ease his country back into the trade and economic relationships it so badly needs with the rest of the world. And if he cares to regard it as evidence that a conciliatory approach to the U.S. pays off, all the better...
Since Robert Polhill was released two weeks ago, a chorus of calls has gone up for a reciprocal gesture from Washington, something that might promote more releases. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati said it was now the West's "turn" and suggested that the U.S. press Israel to release Shi'ite Arabs from its prisons. Even Democrat Lee Hamilton, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East, recommended "some kind of gesture...
...break in the hostage deadlock in Lebanon would be a sign that President Rafsanjani has been winning the power struggle in Tehran. He still faces opposition from militants led by former Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, who remains fiercely opposed to the release of the hostages because it might lead to improved relations with the U.S. and the return of Western influence in Iran. In the early 1980s, Mohtashemi helped organize the Lebanese Hizballah. After Rafsanjani became President following the death of Ayatullah Khomeini last year, he began seeking to lure Hizballah leaders away from their longtime allegiance to Mohtashemi...