Word: khomeini
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...matter is crucial because Khomeini has come to realize how little he can afford to antagonize the bazaari, the prosperous and traditional merchants who helped finance his overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Four years ago the Ayatullah sneered that "economics matters to donkeys." By now, he has been heard to confess, "If the bazaar opted out of the Islamic Republic, the republic would face defeat...
...mollifying the merchants, however, Khomeini does not want to shortchange the common man, whose interests he claims to champion. By last year local black-marketeering had become such a fine art that rice cost five times as much in Tehran as in New York. In April, therefore, the Ayatullah issued a withering diatribe against "heartless hoarders and overchargers" and launched a brutal purge against "economic terrorists." Thousands of small traders were fined, imprisoned and publicly whipped; in August two black-marketeers were sentenced to death...
...regime holds firmly to the belief that it is a religious duty to export revolution until an Islamic empire under the banner of Khomeini stretches from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean-or beyond. Khomeini supporters were said to have been behind the food riots in Tunisia and Morocco earlier this year; authorities also believe that the Iranian-sponsored Al Dawa Party, a group of Iraqi subversives, organized six car bombings in Kuwait last December. Most alarming, some 2,000 Islamic Guards are positioned just inside the Syrian border, from where they make frequent trips into Lebanon to train...
Although the regime's expansionist ambitions have been thwarted by the bloody and seemingly interminable battle against Iraq, the Iranian army has remained surprisingly well armed and high spirited. Indeed, the war that Iraq's President Saddam Hussein launched in 1980 to topple Khomeini has so far only consolidated his hold. Some 45% of Iran's 42.5 million people are under 14, and many seem fired by a passionate loyalty to the Ayatullah. Perhaps 50% of the suicide-driven Basij corps are teenagers; eight-year-old zealots who stay at home may serve the regime by informing...
Divisions may begin to surface once Khomeini is gone. Informed rumor has it the Ayatullah has already sent the name of his chosen successor, in a sealed envelope to be opened at his death, to the 60-man council of clergymen that will formally decide the issue. His most likely choice is Montazeri, the mastermind of the regime's attempts to export its revolution. But the short...