Word: ayatullah
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Iranian officials initially could barely conceal their glee over the Reagan Administration's discomfort. Speaking to a group of government officials, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini thanked them for causing what he sarcastically called "the great explosion that has occurred in Washington's Black House." More recently, however, Muslim fanatics have criticized government officials for agreeing to deal, however tentatively, with the "Great Satan." Last week a somewhat defensive President Seyed Ali Khamene'i accused the U.S. of using the arms deliveries and the involvement of Israel, officially an enemy of Iran's, in a campaign to "damage [our] reputation and dignity...
Distinguishing Iraqis from Iranians can be hard. Iraq's most revered cleric, Grand Ayatullah Husaini Sistani, speaks Arabic with a thick Persian accent. (Sistan-Baluchestan is the name of a province in southeastern Iran.) Meanwhile, across the border, Iran's top judge, Ayatullah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, struggles with Persian, the residue of an Iraqi birth. Theological cross-pollination and political exile have created deep ties between the two Shi'ite communities--and that's exactly what the U.S. is afraid of. In his speech last week announcing plans to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, President Bush...
...power in Iraq through propaganda and government-sponsored terror, he was inept at international relations and diplomacy. His enemies abroad were myriad. Certainly, he and Assad's regime in Damascus were not friendly, despite the political genetics that linked their ruling parties. But he was also an enemy of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian cleric who had fled the Shah's persecution and sought refuge in Iraq's holy Shi'a city of Najaf in 1965. Saddam did not make it a comfortable stay and Khomeini moved on to exile in Europe. When the Ayatollah became the supreme leader...
...Middle East, Ahmadinejad's leadership is an emblem of a resurgent Iran that is assuming a role as a major regional power. Until now, his assertiveness has enabled him to set the agenda within a political system where foreign policy had been mainly in the hands of Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei and his Supreme National Security Council. When council head Ali Larijani recently seemed to indicate a willingness to freeze uranium enrichment in negotiations with European countries, Ahmadinejad quickly shot him down, publicly declaring that Iran would never take such a step...
...poet, sounding like a lunatic and not caring whether the West likes him. But Iran has multiple power centers. There's an election next month, for example, in which a reformist former President is challenging a fundamentalist cleric to join the Assembly of Experts that oversees Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. About 70% of the population is under 30, and there are at least 70,000 active blogs expressing all sorts of aspirations of a diverse people, including ones by the President (ahmadinejad.ir) and Supreme Leader (khamenei.ir...