Word: ayatullah
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...earlier, a U.S. delegation, led by Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, had flown to Algiers with a carefully formulated written statement of the American position. Acting as go-betweens, Algerian officials received the document and delivered it to Tehran. At week's end the chaotic regime of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini was still mulling over its next move. Whatever that might be, there was little hope now that the hostages would be freed in the immediate future. At Wiesbaden, West Germany, staffers at the U.S. Air Force hospital relaxed their guard after weeks of preparing for the hostages...
...initial reaction of key Iranian officials was not encouraging. Ali Reza Nobari, the American-educated governor of Iran's central bank, described the American reply as "cool to us" and doubted that U.S. law was a real obstacle to satisfying all the demands. Ayatullah Seyyed Mohammed Beheshti, leader of the hard-lining Islamic Republican Party, threatened again that if the U.S. response was deemed unsatisfactory, the Majlis would have to decide whether to try the hostages as spies...
Iraq now has uncontested control of Khorramshahr, up to the banks of the Karun River. But the seemingly endless rows of pockmarked or gutted houses provide vivid proof that the door-to-door fighting was bitter and bloody. Iraqi soldiers recount with incredulity how Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's zealous guardsmen, after their ammunition was exhausted, persisted in fighting to the death with sticks and knives. Said an Iraqi major who conducted some of the mop-up operations: "They were crazy. Many of them wore a gold key around their necks. They said they were told by Khomeini that...
Before the war in the gulf began, my blood used to boil at the very mention of Ayatullah Khomeini. But today I cannot help sympathizing with the poor devil. His spectacular crusade captured the world's imagination, and it is a sorry spectacle to see such an industrious personality faltering before his adversary and heading toward inevitable disaster...
...short, unshaven young men in blue jeans and olive-drab flak jackets walked up to the door of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's modest house in the Tehran suburb of Jamaran. They were immediately ushered inside. The two visitors had been mere university freshmen until a year ago. On Nov. 4, 1979, they joined an estimated 500 other militants in seizing and occupying the U.S. embassy. Now, while their comrades downtown were preparing to celebrate the first anniversary of the siege, the two young men were reporting to Khomeini to elicit his "guidance" about the vote by the Majlis...