Word: iranian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...terrorists, not as victims of U.S. foreign policy as some would like to believe. Those responsible for the hijacking of TWA flight 847 should be held fully accountable without hesitation and procrastination. We must not allow the hijackers to succeed in dividing America. The terrorists acts of Palestinian, Syrian, Iranian and other forces should not be allowed to masquerade as justified rebellions against Western-supported suppression...
Alternatively, the U.S. could go to the presumed root of the trouble: Iran. Carrier-based U.S. warplanes could, for instance, bomb an Iranian air base, an action that the Carter Administration considered taking if Iran had begun to kill the hostages seized at the American embassy in Tehran in 1979. Or the planes could hit the oil-refining and shipping facilities on Kharg Island; that would damage the Iranian economy but cause minimum loss of life...
Unseen, unknown, apparently unstoppable, Islamic Jihad may not even exist. It could be merely a cover name for a loose confederation of Muslim Shi'ite fanatics. Or it may be the code name for a carefully coordinated campaign by Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Iranian government has expressed sympathy for the extremists' goals but denies supplying or controlling them. U.S. National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane insists otherwise. Said he last March: "There is sufficient evidence that radical Shi'ite terrorists are responsive to Iranian guidance for us to hold Iran responsible for attacks against U.S. citizens...
Radical Shi'ite factions settled into a virtual viper's nest in Baalbek, an ancient city in the Bekaa Valley 40 miles east of Beirut. There a contingent of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, inspired by the Khomeini revolution, sent young Lebanese fanatics out on bottle-smashing sprees in the bars of Beirut, taught them how to rig cars with powerful bombs and prepared them to die for their cause. "Like Khomeini," says Gary Sick, a former National Security Council staffer and an expert on Islamic fundamentalism, "these Shi'ite fundamentalists are rejecting the entire Western system...
Fragments of evidence -- secret payments, cryptic cables, visits from high Iranian officials -- indicate that Khomeini's regime may be in close touch with the terrorists, if not managing them. The camps enjoy at least the tacit support of Syria as well, since the Bekaa Valley is controlled by Damascus. In a remarkably candid speech last week, Syrian President Hafez Assad conceded that Syria was in contact with extremist groups who are holding seven Americans, four Frenchmen and one Briton, seized over the past 18 months. Assad mildly rebuked the kidnapers for violating a "code of honor between combatants," but praised...