Word: hossein
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Eager to show there was support for his policies, Prime Minister Mir Hossein Moussavi asked Iran's parliament last week to give him and his government a vote of confidence...
THROUGHOUT the 35-year reign of the Shah, border conflicts between Iran and Iraq never escalated beyond short exchanges of gunfire. But in the fall of 1980, not a year after Khomeini returned to Iran. Iraqi president Saddam-Hossein launched a full-scale surprise attack into Iran. Today, almost half a million people have died and the two nations continue to wage...
What were Saddam-Hossein's reasons for attacking Iran? Certainly, the Iraqi president hoped to take advantage of the political turmoil in Iran and the chaotic state of the Iranian army--most of its ablest generals were purged after the Shah's ouster--to settle an old border dispute. But this was the least of his motives; Saddam-Hossein, whose regime has never enjoyed full domestic support, meant to use the war to solidify his domestic political standing. Khomeini had just made public his plans to export Iran's Islamic revolution, and Iraq, with its large population...
Months after the war started, Iranian troops managed to regain almost all the territory lost to Iraq. Having counted on the advantage of a surprise attack for a quick military victory. Saddam-Hossein no longer had a real chance to win the war against Iran. The Iraqis have since tried to minimize their losses and put an end to the costly ordeal...
Last August, Iran's prosecutor-general, Hojatoleslam Hossein Musavi Tabrizi, ordered the abolition of all Baha'i organizations. The community obediently shut down its 400 local meetinghouses and dissolved the national and local governing councils. In the months since Tabrizi's declaration, a farmer was lynched, a young woman was slain by a mob just after she gave birth, and 190 more Baha'is were arrested. Says Mehri Mavaddat, an Iranian refugee lawyer now living in Toronto whose husband was executed in 1981: "The killings are very casual. That's what makes them so horrible...