Word: ayatullah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hijackers were identified by an accomplice as members of Islamic Jihad (or Holy War), the shadowy Shi'ite Muslim organization that is regarded as a sort of umbrella for various fundamentalist terror groups operating in Lebanon and other Middle East countries. Sympathetic to Iran's revolutionary ruler, the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, and quite possibly subsidized by the Iranian leadership, Islamic Jihad and its confederates are blamed for many of the suicide bombing missions that have afflicted American and other Western military bases and diplomatic missions in the Middle East in the past two years...
...American lives in revenge, and not just in the Middle East. "If we hit Iran, there is certain to be terrorism in the U.S.," says Robert Kupperman, co-author of the respected book Terrorism: Threat, Reality, Response. There are thousands of Iranians in the U.S., Kupperman notes, and the Ayatullah Khomeini has among them "a network in place which could respond almost immediately...
...attempt on the life of the ruler of Kuwait, an Iraqi ally, two weeks ago; Tehran denies the charge. Iraq's basic problem is that it desperately wants to end the war it started 56 months ago, but does not know how to achieve that aim. The Iranian leader, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, continues to insist that hostilities will not end until the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has fallen. Some of Khomeini's domestic enemies maintain that another reason for the Ayatullah's inflexibility is that he needs the gulf war to hold his increasingly fractious country together...
...warned the government of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, which is believed to be providing Islamic Jihad with material and spiritual assistance, that the U.S. will hold Iran responsible for the fate of the Beirut hostages. Three months ago, when Islamic Jihad threatened to kill one of the Americans it was holding, Secretary of State George Shultz told Iran that it would suffer military consequences if any of the captives in Lebanon were harmed. Though it was by no means clear precisely what the Secretary had in mind, a senior State Department official added last week, "That is a permanent warning...
Though neither side gained much from the slaughter, the battle gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein an opportunity to savor a victory and allow his war- weary people to stage a celebration. The war, however, will continue as long % as Iran's leader, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, insists that Saddam must step down before there can be peace...