Word: ayatullah
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...believe it is immoral to rip off the Ayatullah and send the profits to the contras so that the U.S.S.R. does not have a Communist base in North America. If readers were to believe every word TIME published, they would think President Reagan was responsible for each scandal that happened. When you write about the President and his ethics, remember what this country was like when he took office...
...Young Iranian soldiers smile and wave from open trucks snaking up Kurdistan's dusty mountain roads toward the Iraqi front. "Down with Israel!" they chant. "Down with Russia! Down with America!" Some are not old enough to shave, but no matter. They are basij, the volunteers to whom the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini has promised eternal bliss should they fall in battle. They beam at the soft thud as an Iranian artillery shell is fired toward Iraqi forces in the village of Mawat, just over a nearby ridge. But then they ignore the incoming Iraqi fire that gouges the orchards surrounding...
Despite the heavy casualties, most Iranians appear to embrace both the war and the changes the Ayatullah Khomeini has introduced since he overthrew the Shah in 1979. One small demonstration for a peace settlement took place in downtown Tehran in early April, but the conflict generally remains a popular, unifying force. On street corners people donate money and jewelry to the war effort, while children drop coins in plastic piggy-type banks shaped like hand grenades. Diplomats estimate that the country is spending as much as $5 billion of its $7 billion annual budget on the war against Iraq. Religion...
When the talk in Tehran is not of the war, it is about Khomeini's successor. The Ayatullah now plays no visible role in public life. By most accounts, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 52, the pragmatic Speaker of the Parliament, is the leading candidate to take over. At this point, it is unclear what impact his alleged role in the U.S.-Iran arms deal will have on the succession. "It's a time bomb ticking away," says one diplomat. While Iran's council of experts designated Ayatullah Hussein Ali Montazeri, 64, the senior cleric from Qum, as the formal successor...
...Secord heard from North that Ronald Reagan knew about the diversion of profits from the Iranian arms sales to the contras. North told Secord that "in some conversations" he had mused to the President about the irony of having the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini unwittingly finance the Nicaraguan guerrillas. But given North's reputation for embellishing or even inventing conversations between the President and himself, should what he told Secord be believed? "I did not take it as a joke," said Secord. Nonetheless, he said he was "skeptical" about North's report of the conversations, because "it did not sound like...