Word: qum
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Your cover will be reproduced in Iran on placards, in newspapers, on television and will become just one more piece of evidence that the madman of Qum is winning his war of wills with the American people...
...Qum is a city of 250,000 people that is drenched in dust, swept by howling, bitter-cold winds in winter and scorched by an angry sun in summer. A 19th century British traveler, James Morier, described Iran's religious center as a place in which, "excepting on the subject of religion, and settling who are worthy of salvation, and who are to be damned, no one opens his lips. Every man you meet is either a descendant of the Prophet or a man of the law. All wear long and mortified faces ... These priests will harken to no medium?...
Blessed with 18 seminaries, as well as a 1,100-year-old shrine, Qum, appropriately, is the Ayatullah Khomeini's home. Three days before being expelled from Iran, TIME Middle East Bureau Chief Bruce van Voorst went to Qum for an exclusive interview with the Ayatullah. It was the first such interview Khomeini had granted to a U.S. magazine since the fall of the Shah. The interview is greatly revealing, first as to how implacable is Khomeini's hate for all things American, and second for how strikingly it shows the vast gulf that separates Islamic and Western perceptions...
...miracle has occurred. Under the previous regime, a single policeman could force all merchants in a huge bazaar to hoist flags to mark the Shah's birthday. These very people stood up against tanks and artillery with their bare hands. Even now, they wear burial shrouds, come here [to Qum] and declare their readiness for martyrdom. A nation thus transformed cannot be pushed around. Mr. Carter has not understood this transformation yet. He thinks a dictator can be imposed on the country again. But he must understand that Iranians will never put up with such actions. Carter must wake...
While the number of hostages was being argued, the crisis took yet another bizarre twist, this time in Qum. There Khomeini met with six U.S. ministers, apparently under the mistaken impression that they included the three Americans who had visited the embassy. He delivered a tirade against the failings of Christian clergymen and of Pope John Paul II, who has urged that the hostages be released. Asked Khomeini: "Do you know that, with his economic blockade, Mr. Carter intends to let 35 million people die of starvation? Does the Pope know about all this and yet condemn...