Word: khomeini
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...sale of arms to Iran might be regarded as a foreign policy aberration. The operation had only the most tangential connection with the Reagan Doctrine, even if one accepts the geopolitical justification of cultivating moderates in Iran to help swing a post-Khomeini government away from hostility to the U.S., and thus frustrate Soviet designs on a vital region. That justification was not much more than a rationalization for North, who initially horned in on the affair as the NSC's antiterrorist expert. His electronic messages to Poindexter spoke in the crudest terms of so many weapons to be traded...
...American vessels in the gulf, Tehran vowed to continue shooting at Kuwaiti tankers, regardless of the flag they fly. Since September the Iranians have attacked 29 ships in the gulf, 25 of them serving Kuwait. In a meeting with foreign journalists, the President denied that he was "daring" the Khomeini regime to open fire. But when asked how the U.S. would react, Reagan replied, "I think it's far better if the Iranians go to bed every night wondering what we might do than us telling them in advance...
...soldiers smile and wave from open trucks snaking up Kurdistan's dusty mountain roads toward the Iraqi front. "Down with Israel!" they chant. "Down with Russia! Down with America!" Some are not old enough to shave, but no matter. They are basij, the volunteers to whom the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini has promised eternal bliss should they fall in battle. They beam at the soft thud as an Iranian artillery shell is fired toward Iraqi forces in the village of Mawat, just over a nearby ridge. But then they ignore the incoming Iraqi fire that gouges the orchards surrounding them...
Despite the heavy casualties, most Iranians appear to embrace both the war and the changes the Ayatullah Khomeini has introduced since he overthrew the Shah in 1979. One small demonstration for a peace settlement took place in downtown Tehran in early April, but the conflict generally remains a popular, unifying force. On street corners people donate money and jewelry to the war effort, while children drop coins in plastic piggy-type banks shaped like hand grenades. Diplomats estimate that the country is spending as much as $5 billion of its $7 billion annual budget on the war against Iraq. Religion...
When the talk in Tehran is not of the war, it is about Khomeini's successor. The Ayatullah now plays no visible role in public life. By most accounts, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 52, the pragmatic Speaker of the Parliament, is the leading candidate to take over. At this point, it is unclear what impact his alleged role in the U.S.-Iran arms deal will have on the succession. "It's a time bomb ticking away," says one diplomat. While Iran's council of experts designated Ayatullah Hussein Ali Montazeri, 64, the senior cleric from Qum, as the formal successor...