Word: ites
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...what does Khamenei want? In Tehran, speculation about the cleric's ambitions and the future of his partnership with Ahmadinejad is a parlor game of government insiders. Though Khomeini's doctrine of velayet-e faqih grants Khamenei divine right to rule, Khamenei is a breed apart from most Shi'ite mullahs, who still abide by premodern strictures. "He wears a watch," says an intimate, to illustrate how Khamenei differs from his fellow clerics. He hikes in jeans in Tehran's Alborz Mountains and plays the tar, a traditional Iranian stringed instrument. On religious issues, Khamenei is a conservative...
...than 2,500 American soldiers highlights the sensitivities facing Prime Minister Maliki: He needs to forge a new political compact with the Sunni nationalists who make up the bulk of the insurgency - as distinct from the minority aligned with al-Qaeda - while maintaining the support of the skeptical Shi'ite parties of his own coalition and avoiding making life difficult for the Bush administration...
...Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has repeatedly emphasized the importance of drawing in nationalist Sunni insurgent groups to achieving a workable consensus in Iraq. The flip side of that equation, as Khalilzad has also made clear, is that the Shi'ite militias must be brought under government control. Maliki has signaled that he plans to achieve this by integrating the militias into the national security force. But the Sunnis, backed by the U.S., insist that existing militias must not simply be turned into units of the national security forces - their fighters must be dispersed across the existing security forces...
...focus on the militia issue will intensify now that government forces supported by U.S. troops are seeking to establish security control over the capital - an objective that would presumably require taking down both insurgent cells and Shi'ite militias...
...national unity program being pursued by Maliki has plenty to make both the U.S. and the Shi'ite parties uncomfortable, and managing the political fallout will be a major challenge. He'll need to convince Iraqis, few of whom have a positive view of the U.S., that he's no prot?g? of Washington. And he'll need to depend on the Bush administration's reluctant recognition that no matter how distasteful to Americans, his national unity program is their last best hope in Iraq...