Word: iranian
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...moderates admit they face a rhetorical disadvantage in their spiritual battle. "Salafi Islam is attractive because it says that if you are not rewarded in this lifetime, you will be rewarded in the next," says Jakarta scholar Anwar, who as a student leader around the time of the Iranian revolution considered himself radical, then later gravitated toward a more moderate faith. "It's hard to compete against that ideology. Being moderate is more subtle and complex. It's harder to sell...
...Middle East, brokering a tentative power-sharing agreement between rival Palestinian factions and mediating between the pro-Western government in Beirut and representatives of Hizballah, who want to topple it. Riyadh is also suppressing the price of oil, in what many observers see as a bid to undermine Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by starving his government of cash. And the Saudis have quietly backed the U.S.'s troop surge in Iraq. Every place in the Middle East that matters, it seems, Riyadh is leading, and Washington is following right behind...
...also brought a Shi'ite government to power in Baghdad, prompting panic in the region--and the White House--about Iranian domination of the Middle East. As a result, the Bush Administration is frantically trying to assemble a bloc of friendly regimes to contain Tehran--with Saudi Arabia, Iran's longtime rival in the Persian Gulf, as the linchpin. The Saudis have been working hard to make sure Iran's ally Hizballah doesn't overthrow Fouad Siniora's government in Beirut. They've been trying to reconcile the Palestinians, partly to wean the militant Hamas from its funders in Tehran...
Brookhiser conveniently dates the U.S.'s problems with Iran to the hostage crisis in 1979. Our problems actually date to 1953, when the U.S. and Britain deposed the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh because he had the temerity to believe that Iran's oil wealth belonged to the Iranian people...
...explanations for the timing of the outbreak of hostilities, each tied to a particular interpretation of how events unfolded after the fall of Saddam Hussein: flawed American postwar policies, provocation by foreign jihadis, retaliation by militias like al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, the ineptitude of Iraqi politicians and, lately, Iranian interference. But the rage burning in people like Muslawi and Hussein has much deeper and older roots. It is the product of centuries of social, political and economic inequality, imposed by repression and prejudice and frequently reinforced by bloodshed. The hatred is not principally about religion. Sunnis and Shi'ites...