Word: shied
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Iran evinces no signs of accommodating Saddam Hussein's wishes. Tehran insists that peace can be achieved only after three conditions are satisfied: the repatriation of 120,000 Iraqi Shi'ites exiled in Iran, the payment of $150 billion in war reparations and "punishment of the aggressor." For Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini and other mullahs in the government hierarchy, the last condition means nothing less than Saddam Hussein's ouster, the destruction of the ruling Baath Party and the establishment of a pro-Iran Shi'ite regime in Baghdad...
...defense of the Basra region appears to have infused new life into Saddam Hussein's regime. The Iraqi strongman seems to have been vindicated in the belief that his troops would fight tenaciously once they were protecting their own territory. Moreover, his assiduous courtship of Iraqi Shi'ites, who make up 55% of the population, has blunted Khomeini's call for insurgency. But Saddam Hussein's ultimate test still lies ahead: both he and Khomeini realize that their bitter rivalry will be resolved only when one of them is swept from power. -By William Drozdiak. Reported...
...long will the war last? On that question at least, most Iraqis and Iranians agreed: a long time. When Khomeini ordered the invasion of Iraq, he assumed that Iraqi defenses would quickly crumble. He also assumed that Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims, who form 55% of the country's population, would rise up against the Saddam Hussein government and welcome the Iranian liberators. After that, Khomeini believed, it would be an easy matter to overthrow Saddam and his ruling Baath Party and to establish an Islamic republic in Iraq. But so far, the Iraqis have fought bravely...
With the death of the Prophet Muhammad in A.D. 632, the conflicts that led to the great division of Islam between Sunnis and Shi'ites began. Today the Sunnis account for more than 80% of the world's 750 million Muslims, but the Shi'ites who predominate in Iran, Iraq and Bahrain and who have unstable minorities in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Kuwait, generate fears far out of proportion to their numbers. . . . The Shi'ites believe that the leadership of Islam should have remained in the Prophet's family. The Sunnis prefer to make such...
...addition, Saddam's aggressively secular, socialist regime has long been anathema to Khomeini's philosophy of government, which insists on the clergy's God-given right to rule. With its 55% Shi'ite majority and Shi'ite shrines at An Najaf and Karbala, Iraq should, in Khomeini's view, be the natural home of a sister Islamic republic...