Word: ayatullah
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...rhetoric of demonstrations in Tehran is worth listening to. Seven years after Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, power is consolidated in the hands of hard-line anti-American conservatives, led by Ahmadinejad and supported by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. Together they have used the Bush Administration's opposition as an opportunity to crack down on reformists. Ahmadinejad initially greeted Obama's victory with a rare congratulatory letter, though his ardor then seemed to cool as he called on the U.S. to "halt your support to the uncultivated and rootless, forged, phony, killers-of-women-and-children Zionists...
...recent Saturday, 30 years to the day when Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in France, the Iranian government held a celebration in the massive shrine to Khomeini that is still under construction near the Tehran airport. The ceremony was a feel-good affair, with a marching band and schoolgirls in white chadors with pink butterfly wings. Speakers ranging from Khomeini's grandson to former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani celebrated the endurance of the world's only Islamic system of clerical and democratic rule. And each person who rose to the flower-strewn podium also used the occasion...
Three decades after Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's triumphant return to Iran to claim power on the ruins of the Shah's regime, Iran's Islamic revolution can still draw a crowd. That much was clear Tuesday as several hundred thousand people converged on Tehran's Freedom Square to celebrate its 30th anniversary at the very spot where Khomeini was first welcomed home from his exile in France. (See pictures of Khomeini's triumphant return to Iran...
...Many in the crowd were willing to echo the President's sentiments. A retired air-force member, 68-year-old Ali Amir-Hosseini, vividly remembered the Ayatullah's return. "We staged a strike and were one of the first brigades to stop collaborating with the Shah's regime," he said, adding, "Back then, we had little pride. We really felt like the stooges of the U.S. Today, we are a proud people. At last we determine our own fate and the bigger powers just don't know how to deal with us." Then he asked a bystander listening in where...
...escalated. Hassan Zaidan al-Luhaibi, a Sunni leader and former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, was killed by a suicide bomber on Jan. 18, just two days after Shi'ite candidate Haitham Kadhim al-Husaini was fatally shot. The murders come as influential Shi'ite cleric Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani has urged Iraqis to vote despite dissatisfaction with previous elections...