Word: ayatullahs
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This is not the image of Ahmadinejad-- the bombastic, headline-grabbing populist --the world has grown used to. Since his election in 2005, Ahmadinejad has become the most prominent Iranian on the global stage since Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, the guiding hand of the country's 1979 Islamic revolution. Ahmadinejad owes his visibility partly to Iran's rise as a regional power and partly to his penchant for spouting what U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns calls "the most abhorrent, irresponsible rhetoric of any global leader in many years." It's that rhetoric, along with Iran's meddling in Iraq...
...where does that leave Ahmadinejad? The Parliament cannot on its own dump him, and he has a little over two years left in his term. Impeachment proceedings require approval of the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, who has yet to repudiate Ahmadinejad. "If Parliament senses for a second that Khamenei has withdrawn his support, the government will fall," says Atrianfar. A politician close to Rafsanjani tells Time, "Most of the decision makers and the élite are against him. If he becomes less popular, even the Supreme Leader will withdraw his support...
Today, as in the past, Lebanon is also a keystone in the broader struggle for power and influence across the Middle East. While President Bush hailed the Cedar Revolution, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei recently declared that Iran would defeat America in Lebanon. Besides vying for sway in the country, Washington is jousting with Tehran and Damascus over everything from Iran's nuclear program and Iraq's future to Arab-Israeli peace. "You have the desire of the Iranians to establish, I wouldn't say a satellite state, but something of that sort," Siniora says...
...Indonesia's path to a more puritanical form of piety cannot be separated from the global trend toward conservatism that has swept Islam since the 1979 Iranian revolution, which brought Ayatullah Khomeini to power. The movement has only accelerated since Sept. 11, 2001, with the Internet bringing together Muslims worldwide in condemnation of Western actions in the Middle East. "With the hegemony of the West, we have so many problems," says Muhamad Ikhwan, director of Wahdah Islamiyah, which runs a 1,000-student Islamic academy in the eastern city of Makassar, where many girls wear chadors that cover everything...
WHEN SADDAM HUSSEIN ASSUMED POWER in Baghdad in 1979, Iraq's Shi'ites had enjoyed a couple of decades of respite under leaders who allowed them some measure of equality with the Sunnis. Then came Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. Fearing a similar uprising in Iraq, Saddam revived some old repressions and ordered the murder of Iraq's most popular ayatullah, Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr, uncle of Muqtada. Shi'ites made up a majority of those killed in Iraq's war with Iran, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, but after it ended they were once...