Word: iranian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Islamic Jihad (or Holy War), the shadowy Shi'ite Muslim organization that is regarded as a sort of umbrella for various fundamentalist terror groups operating in Lebanon and other Middle East countries. Sympathetic to Iran's revolutionary ruler, the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, and quite possibly subsidized by the Iranian leadership, Islamic Jihad and its confederates are blamed for many of the suicide bombing missions that have afflicted American and other Western military bases and diplomatic missions in the Middle East in the past two years...
...plagued their country, particularly since the Israeli invasion of June 1982, are seeking a fairer shake after generations of neglect and discrimination by Lebanon's wealthier and more powerful Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims. Beyond all that, the Shi'ite fanatical fringe, inspired by the example of the Iranian revolution, wants to destroy the last vestiges of Western "decadence" in the Islamic world, particularly the presence of the U.S., that "Great Satan." Whether the hijackers of Flight 847 fitted into that category, or were exemplars of a more classical political terrorism, bent on achieving specific ends in the region...
...where local officials responded to the plane's landing request by closing their airport. But they changed their minds after the arrival of an urgent plea from President Reagan to Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid. U.S. officials, who well remember the important role played by Algerian diplomats in settling the Iranian hostage crisis almost five years ago, had hoped that the hijacking could be resolved one way or another in Algiers. But after remaining on the runway there for five hours, during which time they released another 21 passengers, the hijackers ordered the pilot to take off again and head back...
...hijacker replied angrily, "Did you forget the Bir al Abed massacre?" He was referring to the March 8 car bombing in the Bir al Abed suburb of Beirut that killed more than 75 Shi'ite Muslims but failed to hurt Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadallah, one of Lebanon's pro-Iranian Shi'ite religious leaders. Shi'ites later claimed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had engineered the bombing, in an attempt to fight Shi'ite terrorism with counterterrorism; the CIA denied the charge...
...bomb attempt on the life of the ruler of Kuwait, an Iraqi ally, two weeks ago; Tehran denies the charge. Iraq's basic problem is that it desperately wants to end the war it started 56 months ago, but does not know how to achieve that aim. The Iranian leader, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, continues to insist that hostilities will not end until the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has fallen. Some of Khomeini's domestic enemies maintain that another reason for the Ayatullah's inflexibility is that he needs the gulf war to hold his increasingly fractious country together...