Word: ayatullah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rear of the shop, telex machines, shortwave radios and computerized communications gear hummed continuously. Business was brisk, and it had nothing to do with rugs. The shop was a front for the illegal sale of U.S.-made weapons and aircraft parts to the government of Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini...
...Commerce Department of often approving licenses for materials after Customs has seized them. All the agencies involved claim that the State Department lacks a clear policy. Says a senior Customs official: "As long as you can keep Defense, Commerce, Customs and the Office of Munitions Control separated, the Ayatullah's purchasing agents have it made...
...supplies stems from the Shah's purchase of some $17 billion in American munitions between 1970 and 1979. This huge stockpile of sophisticated U.S. weaponry, which included 80 F-14 fighters so advanced that they were sold to no other foreign country, fell into the hands of the Ayatullah's revolutionary government after the collapse of the Shah's regime in February 1979. To promote ties to the moderate government of Mehdi Bazargan and the armed forces, the Carter Administration conducted secret negotiations with Tehran, creating a framework for the subsequent delivery of most...
Ironically, although the Ayatullah and his followers are violently anti-Israel, one of the countries that has violated the U.S. boycott most blatantly is Israel. When Iraq invaded Iran, the Tehran regime urgently needed U.S. supplies. Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski confirmed in his recently published memoirs that the Carter Administration clandestinely offered to supply spare parts to Iran in return for the hostages' freedom. "We learned, much to our dismay," he wrote, "that the Israelis had been secretly supplying American spare parts to the Iranians, without much concern for the negative impact this was having...
...Iran-Iraq war approaches its third anniversary, the government of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini still hopes to overthrow the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who began the conflict by invading Iran. But since the fighting shifted to Iraqi territory last summer, the war has essentially remained in stalemate, characterized by fierce and bloody battles followed by long periods of inactivity. Now, however, there are reports in the Arab world that the Saddam Hussein government is hurting badly, not so much from the Iranian offensive as from the punishing cost...