Word: persian
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...going to inordinate lengths to make sure Iran sinks deeper and deeper into international isolation. We have hostile governments on our common borders with Iraq and Afghanistan. The Kremlin, through its agents' propaganda, has also gone all out to create trouble between us and Pakistan, Turkey and the Persian Gulf nations. It wants us cornered and helpless so that, in desperation, we will turn north. Their policy is clear: to bludgeon Iran to its knees and then impose on it whatever conditions they want...
Baghdad still considers itself at war with Israel and is also a bitter rival of Iran. As the world's second largest oil exporter, after Saudi Arabia, Iraq under President Saddam Hussein has ambitions to replace Iran as the leading military power in the Persian Gulf region...
...longer was he the Aryamehr (Light of the Aryans) and Shahanshah (King of Kings), absolute ruler of the remnant of the Persian Empire that his father had renamed Iran. Since fleeing the country in January 1979, he had been a man without a country, a man with a price on his head, placed there by the Muslim fundamentalists who overthrew him. His search for a home took him initially from Egypt to Morocco to the Bahamas to Mexico. Last October he requested permission to enter the U.S. for medical treatment. Despite warnings that his admission could irreparably damage relations with...
Despite his dynastic pretensions, the Shah was not to the monarchy born. His commoner father Reza Khan, a hot-tempered colonel in the Persian Cossack cavalry, seized power in a bloodless coup in 1921. He forced parliament to dissolve the decadent, 129-year-old Qajar dynasty in 1925 and proclaim him Shah. He took Pahlavi-an ancient Persian language -as his dynastic name. Following his coronation, his first-born son Mohammed Reza, then seven, was designated crown prince. The elder Shah paraded the child around in gold-encrusted uniforms, groomed him in sports and, when he was twelve, packed...
Staunchly antiCommunist, the Shah dreamed of making Iran a military power, the protector of the Persian Gulf. Convinced that he was a reliable and unassailable ally, Washington-most notably the Nixon Administration-encouraged him to build up his arsenal. He did-to the tune of $36 billion. By 1978, Iran had one of the world's most sophisticated collections of advanced weaponry, including F-14 jet fighters and a variety of guided-missile systems. Meanwhile 63,000 of Iran's 66,000 villages had neither piped water nor electricity. The capital of Tehran (pop. 5 million) lacked...