Word: iran
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Formed in 1979 as Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's personal militia, the IRGC acquired a reputation for suicidal human-wave attacks in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. After Khomeini's death in 1989, the government of then President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani sought to channel the guards' fervor into reconstruction projects, allowing them to dip into the coffers of massive religious and charitable foundations known as bonyads; in time, the guards came to control the foundations themselves...
...IRGC's rise presents both threats and opportunities. The sepah is responsible for the very things that most concern Washington: Iran's drive for nuclear weapons and its support of terrorism. Guardsmen hold several key positions in the Supreme National Security Council, through which they are thought to control the levers of Iran's nuclear and missile programs. And an IRGC unit known as the Quds Force provides training and weapons to Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and the Mahdi Army in Iraq. But some analysts think that growing commercial interests may have taken the edge...
...players in Iran's power struggle...
...pictures of Iran's presidential elections and their turbulent aftermath...
President Barack Obama's announcement on Sept. 17 that he was scrapping plans for a long-range-missile shield in Europe prompted a fervor normally reserved for theological discussion. Critics assailed his alternative--smaller, sea-based interceptors to counter the immediate threat from Iran--as a concession to Russia, which had seen the U.S. stronghold near its borders as directed at its own arsenal...