Word: shia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Answers to these questions can put Iran's internal-external politics into the proper perspective. The Islamic Republic, now approaching its seventh year of volatile tenure, has taken every possible measure to entrench itself as a theocratic despotism. Its leaders, armed with the radical Iranian brand of Shia ideology, which utilizes the modern totalitarian techniques of mass mobilization and suppression of all opposition, believe they are in firm conrtol of the country...
...continues because of Iran's failure, so far, to achieve two other goals. It has not successfully made a decisive military breakthrough to topple Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Nor has it been able to incite the Iraqi Shia population to an open rebellion in favor of Khomeini's version of an Islamic regime...
...supported Khomeini during the Ayatullah's long exile in Iraq and later in France. Fouad Ajami, director of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, describes the galvanizing effect of the Iranian upheaval in the spring issue of Foreign Affairs. "For the moderate Shia mainstream, this was a chance for the country's largest group to lay claim to its legitimate share of power," he says. "For more marginal and intemperate men, there was something to the recent events resembling a millennial fulfillment...
...Government source who has dealt with Berri: "He may be in the center but only because the center moved. He's not an extremist, but he's shown that he's quite willing to escalate his language -- and his actions -- to retain his position of authority in the Shia community." Still, there is no doubt that Berri feels deeply about the Shi'ites held by Israel and is as determined as his followers to get them released...
...unclear whether "the title that applies to all Shia leaders" is "ayatollah" or "imam," but both are incorrect. In fact, "imam" has extreme, messianic connotations among Shia Muslims, and it raised more than a few eyebrows a few years ago when Khomeini's followers began to call him by that nomenclature...