Word: ayatullah
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Rafsanjani as "a dealmaking pragmatist [who] may push to repair ties with the U.S. " Viewing Rafsanjani as pragmatic is dangerous, since that is an example of seeing the political landscape of totalitarian countries through the U.S.'s democratic eyes. Rafsanjani is pragmatic in comparison with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei in the same way that the Soviet Union's Nikita Khrushchev was pragmatic in comparison with Joseph Stalin. Klein should recall that the Cuban missile crisis, during which the world was brought to the brink of nuclear war, occurred under the Soviet leadership of the "pragmatic" Khrushchev. Arun...
...spent nearly a decade out of the spotlight, Ayatullah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani still knows how to make an entrance. Arriving for an interview with TIME inside a domed marble Tehran palace, Rafsanjani, 70, strides in with the bounce of a man half his age. He's even accompanied by his film crew. It's all part of a slick campaign aimed at selling one of the Islamic republic's old founding fathers as a hip reformer in tune with restless young Iranians, in hopes of returning the former President to the job he left in 1997. As he settles...
...nothing else, Rafsanjani has proved to be one of Iran's most durable politicians. A confidant of revolutionary leader Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rafsanjani served as the powerful speaker of the Majlis, or National Assembly, for nine years before becoming President two months after Khomeini's death in 1989. In the mid-'80s, he played a pivotal role in the secret arms-for-hostages talks with Reagan Administration officials. Rafsanjani acknowledged to TIME that "we made a limited agreement with them for receiving weapons in return for freeing hostages" held by pro-Iranian militants in Lebanon. He received a leather-bound...
...revolutionary credentials give him the clout to push through reforms--like greater press freedom, fewer dress-code and social restrictions, and better relations with the West--that are opposed by hard-line conservatives, who control the judiciary and security forces and are backed by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. In recent years, the mullahs have responded to the rising clamor for change by blocking reform initiatives of the elected leadership. Khatami was so intimidated by Khamenei that in 2000 he wouldn't shake President Bill Clinton's hand at the U.N. without calling the Supreme Leader back home...
...ranting is a form of verbal fanaticism, and other cultures often do it better. The Middle East today is to ranting what Elizabethan England was to theater: the cradle of geniuses. Every faction and tribe has its Shakespeare of denunciation, from the Ayatullah on down. Communist bloc countries have bureaucratically institutionalized ranting. The East German government once issued a list of approved terms of abuse for speakers describing the British: "paralytic sycophants, effete betrayers of humanity, carrion-eating servile imitators...