Word: royall
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Khomeini may even wish to transcend Iranian nationalism and export his fundamentalist Islamic revival. The prospect of such contagious piety disturbs other Muslim leaders, the Saudi royal family, for example. But it also raises apprehension and a certain amount of bewilderment in the West. When Mahdist Saudi zealots took over the mosque in Mecca last month, the Islamic world displayed a disconcerting readiness to believe Khomeini's incendiary report that the attack had been the work of Zionists and U.S. imperialists. "The Americans have done it again," many Muslims told themselves reflexively. Some Americans have responded by asking with...
From the U.S. viewpoint, the linchpin of the Middle East is Saudi Arabia, which currently supplies the West with about 22% of its oil imports. U.S. security depends, quite literally, on continued oil production by Saudi Arabia-and thus on the staying power of a royal family that faces many of the problems of religious and tribal instability that afflicted the deposed Shah. The Saudis, whose semifeudal society is trying to cope with both Western technology and hordes of unassimilated foreigners, are exceedingly vulnerable to both external and internal threats. That was proved by the recent seizure of the Sacred...
Whatever the size of the Shah's personal fortune, he ran a corrupt government from first to last. Foreign companies frequently had to pay "commissions" to government officials or members of the royal family to get any kind of contract in Iran. One example: between 1973 and 1975 the Bell Helicopter division of Textron Inc., which was selling choppers to the Iranian air force, paid a $3 million commission to a company that turned out to be secretly owned in part by a brother-in-law of the Shah. The Shah indirectly acknowledged the corruption by periodically announcing drives...
...media had less to say about the 60 per cent of adults left illiterate, and the increasing income gap which made Iran one of the world's most unequal societies. Little was heard about the royal family's financial scandals and their heroin smuggling on a global scale...
...LESS PASSIVE director might have chosen to make more of The Royal Family; in this production, nothing transcends simple comedy except Fanny's Act II monologue--a magical evocation of the scene backstage before curtain time, which Wilber uses to cast a spell over the house. In this case, passivity unintentionally pays off--the Loeb Royal Family doesn't pin any more significance on the slightly dated script than it can support. Three hours of good comedy remain, without any mirror tricks but without too much pretense, as well...