Word: tehran
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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IRAN AIR. In July 1983 a jumbo jet bound from Shiraz in southwestern Iran to Tehran was hijacked with 386 passengers aboard by six Iranians opposed to Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. After diverting the plane to Paris, Massoud Rajavi, an exiled leader of the mujahedin opposition to Khomeini, encouraged the hijackers to surrender. One inducement: they would be tried in French courts instead of being deported to Iran. No passengers were harmed...
...capital during rush hour, leaving 20 people dead. Three days earlier a similar explosion took 13 lives in the holy city of Qom. By week's end the government claimed to have crushed two Iraqi-sponsored "terrorist networks," made up of both monarchists and leftist guerrillas, that Tehran held responsible for the bombings. In London, another bomb shattered a video store belonging to Reza Fazeli, a vocal Khomeini critic. Tehran and the mujahedin blamed each other for the blast, which killed Fazeli's 22-year-old son Bijan...
...Muslim fundamentalism. When Parliamentary Speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivered his latest call to arms last week in the northeastern city of Mashad, thousands of cheering young men seemed ready to lay down their lives for the cause of their homeland. "Every day," reports a Western visitor to Tehran, "there are parades for people going to the front. People are still chanting, 'Death to America! Death to Saddam!' Death to just about everything...
...momentum in the seesaw war has increasingly swung in Iran's favor. In February, Tehran staged its most sophisticated assault of the long and bloody conflict. Named Val Fajr (I Swear by the Dawn), the attack seized the Iraqi oil port of Fao. Iraq recovered briefly by capturing the Iranian border town of Mehran in May, only to lose it again in June. Though it enjoys an enormous advantage in equipment, its reliance on rigid defensive tactics makes its soldiers vulnerable to the night attacks and lightning raids of its enemy. "Remember," says a senior U.S. official, "the Iranians...
...price of crude, which accounts for 90% of the country's foreign exchange, has cut its projected 1986 oil revenues from $17 billion to less than $7 billion. That could prove devastating to a nation whose import budget this year is $10 billion. In recent months, stores in Tehran have been chronically short of such staples as butter, rice and lamb. Even economic hardship, however, can serve the regime's interests. Authorities promised one man who was desperate to obtain a TV set that he could have a place on the waiting list -- provided he attend three prayer sessions...