Word: persian
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...effort to smear one another as agents of outside forces, many Hamas supporters imply that Dahlan and his men are being backed by the U.S. and Israel, while Fatah supporters have been heard shouting "Hamas is Shi'ite, Hamas is Persian" - there is no Shi'ite presence among the Palestinian Muslims, but the reference was designed to draw attention to Iran's backing for Hamas...
...longer so reluctantly. Twenty-one years is long enough to allow a generation of Palestinians to grow to adulthood knowing only, and hating, the occupation. But in a land so old, 21 years is merely an instant. Civilizations are piled on top of one another (Hebrew, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Hellenistic, Maccabean, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Egyptian, crusader, Mameluke, Ottoman, on and on), all the laminations that conquerors have left in the earth there -- a rich debris of meanings and promises and desires. The accumulation of passion and memory, so much of it implicated with God, can make the land seem...
...plans to send more Americans there. She persuaded Bush to back European-led negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and even offer to talk directly to Tehran if it stopped enriching uranium. But she also supports the military's recent moves to beef up a presence in the Persian Gulf and target Iranian interests in Iraq. Although both Bush and Rice deny they have any hostile intent, there is anxiety in some foreign-policy circles that even as it struggles to avoid losing one war in Iraq, the Administration may provoke another one across the border in Iran...
...complicates the U.S.'s strategy for dealing with the country that has lately entered the Administration's rhetorical gunsights: Iran. Since the start of the year, the U.S. has ramped up its bellicosity toward Iran and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It has moved a second aircraft-carrier group to the Persian Gulf and conducted raids against Iranian targets in Iraq. But the prospect of a military confrontation causes shudders among many U.S. officials, given Tehran's capacity to retaliate against U.S. troops in Iraq and strike civilian targets around the world. Rice says that "the President absolutely believes this...
Sunni Iraqis have feared Persian domination since before there was an Iraq. That fear reached fever pitch after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Sunni politicians regularly call their Shi'ite rivals tools of Tehran. If Iraq's Shi'ite leaders want the Sunnis to end their insurgency, they'll have to seriously distance themselves from the mullahs next door. If they don't, the Baghdad government will lack influence over large chunks of the country, since even with Iran's help, Iraq's Shi'ite militias won't easily defeat a Sunni insurgency stocked with Saddam's former officers...