Word: tabriz
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...marches against the government after the fall of the Shah. They sent thousands of guerrillas to fight against Khomeini's forces in Kurdistan, thereby demonstrating a capacity to put an army into the field. But they did not take part in the recent rebellion against the constitution in Tabriz. Explains a Fedayan leader: "We do not join any movement simply because it is opposed to the government. For us, what matters is the destruction of class privilege, the exercise of national sovereignty by genuine, grass-roots popular councils...
Azerbaijan may seem a remote corner of the world, but this was once the land of the all-powerful Medes, the birthplace of Zoroaster, and from its capital of Tabriz the Mongol Khans ruled an empire that stretched from Egypt to Cathay. Though a disastrous series of earthquakes leveled every trace of Tabriz's great palaces, the region's ethnic Turks remain a driving force in Iran. Not only do they represent more than a third of the population (5 million in Azerbaijan, 8 million more in the rest of the country), but they are the nation...
...weeks ago against the constitution that grants all power to Khomeini, but that was enough to inspire a threatening Khomeini mob to surround his house and kill one of his guards. So the battle began, and within a short time Khomeini's officials had been driven from Tabriz. Khomeini has been uncertain how to fight back. At first, he tried words. In a rhetorical broadside, he castigated the rebels as "mere heathens, foreign-led agents whose dossiers are in our hands." He tried to rally the Azerbaijanis to his anti-American crusade. Said he: "Now that...
When that failed to quell the uprising, Khomeini tried force. The government sent a planeload of revolutionary guards to reassert Tehran's authority in Tabriz. Their first goal was to oust the rebels from the local radio and TV station, where a large portrait of Sharietmadari flapped from the antenna. Backed by crowds shouting pro-Khomeini slogans, the guards chased the rebels out of the bungalow-style building. The Sharietmadari supporters then tried to seize the station again, but the guards drove them off with automatic weapons, killing three and wounding more than...
Soon afterward, a three-member commission from Tehran, headed by Economic and Finance Minister Abol Hassan Banisadr, arrived in Tabriz to negotiate a truce with Sharietmadari's supporters. But the emissaries were immediately discredited by Banisadr, who announced insultingly that he would deal only with individual Azerbaijanis, not with Sharietmadari's political organization, the Muslim People's Republic Party...