Word: conflict
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Khomeini's sentiments were genuine -- and Arab and Western observers generally believed they were -- he had taken a giant step toward ending the conflict. Calling the Iranian decision a "major breakthrough," the U.S. State Department said the move opens the way for a "restoration of stability in a troubled region of the world...
...role in the gulf war did not come without a price, monetarily and otherwise. Tehran's voracious appetite for weaponry with which to wage the conflict led directly to the Iran-contra affair, the secret attempt by the Reagan Administration to ransom U.S. hostages in Lebanon with arms for Iran. In 1987, largely to prevent the Soviet Union from assuming a greater role in the region, Washington agreed to reflag Kuwait oil vessels with the Stars and Stripes and escort them through gulf waters under U.S. naval protection. That decision sparked some Democratic demands for Reagan to seek congressional approval...
...cease-fire holds, it may mark an end to not only a war but also a crusade. Khomeini had sought to use the conflict to help export his fundamentalist Islamic revolution from non-Arab Iran to the Arab world. The Ayatullah's dramatic about-face must have been all the more painful since it coincided with two anniversaries that are anathema to him. Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the revolt that brought to power Iraq's ruling secular Ba'athist regime, now headed by President Saddam Hussein. Last week was also the beginning of the hajj, the season...
...Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim minority. After fighting more than three years to recapture its enemy-held land, Iran invaded Iraqi territory in 1984. Eventually, it squeezed off the Shatt al Arab waterway in southern Iraq, the country's only entrance to the gulf. At one point in the conflict, Iran held large areas of territory, notably in southeastern Iraq, and tried to establish an Islamic Republic of Iraq that would replace Hussein's government...
...great nation" for what he was doing. But "in view of the opinion of all high-ranking political and military experts," he said, a cease-fire was "in the interest of the revolution." In a chilling epitaph for the hundreds of thousands of war dead, he declared that the conflict had been "good for those whose children were martyred...