Word: khomeini
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...Khamenei, 69, was born in Meshhad to a family of religious scholars. Began advanced religious training in Qom while still a teenager, and shortly thereafter became a protege of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini...
...took part in street protests against the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran. After the uprising was quashed, Khomeini was exiled, and between 1964 and 1978 his protege continued to espouse dissident views in his absence, mobilizing protests and demonstrations and maintaining close ties to his exiled mentor. Khamenei was imprisoned multiple times and, in 1975, was internally exiled to a remote region in southeastern Iran...
...Became Iran's Supreme Leader in 1989. In the view of most experts, his appointment - by Iran's Assembly of Experts - is attributable to the strength of his relationship with Khomeini rather than his religious credentials, which, among the upper echelon of Iran's clergy, are viewed as comparatively weak...
...more understandable today than they were in 1979. At that time, Washington stubbornly stood behind the regime of secular and autocratic Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, despite the rebirth of religious fundamentalism among millions of Iranians and their yearning for an obscure Muslim cleric living in exile: Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. U.S. military, diplomatic and intelligence officers blanketed Tehran but ignored the gathering storm. It was a massive blunder. Khomeini swept into power and transformed Middle East politics and alliances. His supporters seized the American compound and its occupants, an act that has frozen bilateral relations in a state of hostility ever...
...been the Basij militia, which has waded into opposition crowds with flailing batons. This 2005 piece by TIME's Azadeh Moaveni explains the origins of the group, which comprises thousands of young men organized into neighborhood militias. "The militia, whose name means mobilization in Persian, was created by Ayatullah Khomeini in the 1980s to recruit young men to fight against Iraq. But a decade later, they took on the role of an official morality police, becoming better known for raiding parties than for raiding the Iraqi front line." In 2005, she says, they took on an unprecedented function when they...