Word: tehran
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...death of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini earlier this month put pressure on Iran to make some kind of move to break out of the diplomatic isolation into which it had become sealed during his decade-long xenophobic rule. The main question was which direction Tehran would look in first. Last week Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful Speaker of Iran's parliament, provided the answer. Interrupting his observance of a 40-day period of national mourning for the late Imam, Rafsanjani arrived in Moscow to an elaborate reception. The visit was the beginning of a thaw between neighbors whose relations...
While the Ayatullah's body lay in state inside a refrigerated glass box, the crowd of mourners in Tehran became so thick that eight were reportedly crushed to death. The next day, as a helicopter brought the open wooden coffin containing Khomeini's remains to the city's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, nearly a million mourners thrust forward in the blistering heat and choking dust, many wailing and pounding their heads as they groped to touch the body and snatch a piece of the linen burial shroud...
Khomeini vowed to pursue the conflict with Iraq to the "frontiers of martyrdom," and sent an estimated 900,000 Iranians, many of them not yet teenagers, beyond that frontier. But in August 1988, the loss of key positions forced Tehran to accept a United Nations-sponsored cease-fire in the eight- year war. It was, said the Ayatullah, a decision "more deadly than drinking poison...
...Tehran's utter isolation in the world of nations had become apparent just two weeks before the cease-fire decision, when a U.S. frigate mistakenly shot down an Iranian jetliner with 290 people aboard: international response was notably muted. In the following months, leading Iranian politicians such as Parliamentary Speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 54, attempted to soften their country's radical image. But Khomeini would have none of it. Last February he prompted a worldwide outcry when he demanded the death of Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born, British author of The Satanic Verses, a book many regard as blasphemous...
...Iraq attacked Iran across the Shatt al-Arab in September 1980 after Khomeini called for an uprising of Iraqi Shi'ites and fomented skirmishes along the border. Iranian forces blunted the Iraqi offensive, and two months after the war began, the conflict was largely stalemated. After years of fighting, Tehran lost all hope of victory when Iraq stopped an Iranian drive for the port city of Basra in early 1987; a year later, Iraq began the offensive that eventually brought Iran to the peace table. The fighting reportedly cost both countries an estimated $500 billion. More than 900,000 Iranian...