Word: ite
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...rumpled blue jogging outfit dashed into Beirut's luxurious Summerland Hotel, overlooking the Lebanese coast. "I'm Charles Glass. I need a place to hide!" he fairly shouted to a receptionist. A U.S. television journalist who knows the Middle East well, Glass had been seized by Muslim Shi'ite terrorists 62 days earlier in one of Beirut's southern suburbs. Having somehow escaped, he had fled to the right place: the hotel is a heavily guarded sanctuary of Lebanon's Druze community, which is closely aligned with the Syrian government of President Hafez Assad...
...street, in a Shi'ite district of southern Beirut, Glass immediately sought help. At an all-night bakery he claimed to be a Canadian of Lebanese origin who needed a doctor for his sick daughter. To have told the bakery patrons the truth, he feared, would have frightened them and perhaps even led to his recapture. But a passing motorist quickly gave him a lift to the Summerland, two miles away. The Syrians then took him to Damascus, and a day later he was home in London with his wife and five children...
This was Glass's story. What was unclear was whether Iran had simply ordered its allies, the Lebanese Shi'ite terrorists, to allow Glass to escape, but in such a way that they would not appear to have caved in to Syrian pressure. Certainly, this was the version of events promoted by Syria, which is annoyed with Iran for challenging Damascus' prerogatives in Lebanon and which has been trying hard to repair its tattered relations with the U.S. and other Western powers...
Without doubt, Syrian-Iranian tension was at the heart of the case. If the Syrians had been angered by Glass's abduction, they were shocked by last month's incident in Saudi Arabia at the holy city of Mecca, where thousands of Iranian Shi'ite pilgrims staged a bloody riot against Saudi authority. This, in turn, caused other Arab leaders to urge Assad to stop supporting Iran in the gulf war -- a step that would cost him his right to buy Iranian oil at heavily discounted prices. According to Syrian diplomats, Damascus has warned Iran against widening...
...between Iraq and Iran, however, Iraqi Shi'ites, who make up almost 60% of their country's population, have chosen to be Iraqis first and Shi'ites second. The ancient animosity between Arabs and Persians apparently transcends religious sympathies. Nonetheless, the Iraqis receive constant reminders of Iranian Shi'ite fervor. Tehran's major offensives are named Karbala, after the place where Hussein died, and captured Iranian soldiers proudly show off the "keys to Heaven" issued to them when they enlisted. The celestial keys: dog tags. Observes an Iraqi official: "The Iranians are still fighting the Battle of Hussein...