Word: tehran
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...opened in 1980 by Balanian Hashemi, a wealthy Iranian businessman who had fled his country after the fall of the Shah. Although he had lost favor with the mullahs, Hashemi had no qualms about making money from their revolution. As thousands of Iranians gathered daily in the streets of Tehran to shout "Death to America!" and even after a gang of students took over the U.S. embassy, holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, Hashemi was selling U.S. arms to Iran. Ordered by the Iranian military to be more discreet, Hashemi closed the shop last year. He now directs...
...Washington Post reported that in 1980 Casey had set up what he called an "intelligence operation" to keep the Reagan staff informed of any attempt by Carter to spring a much feared "October surprise" in the campaign, such as gaining freedom for the U.S. embassy hostages held captive in Tehran. The Post claimed that Casey had used retired military officers who favored Reagan's election to report any unusual U.S. troop movements that might signal a dramatic move by Carter abroad. Indeed, Carter's failure to secure the release of the hostages probably contributed more to his loss...
...Moscow-Tehran relations have, in fact, long been characterized by mutual and mistrustful exploitation. The Soviets were far from enthusiastic in their support for Khomeini in the months just before his 1979 overthrow of the Shah. The reason, as a Tudeh member now in jail puts it, was that "Moscow perceived the clergy as incorrigible reactionaries." Those fears were well founded. Right-wing clergymen routinely reviled the Soviets as godless Communists, while Khomeini opposed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But Moscow wooed Tehran by offering assistance against the nettlesome Mujahedin guerrillas. In response, the mullahs invited KGB agents to Iran...
After last week's outburst, both nations were eyeing each other more warily. Iranian authorities nervously tried to squelch rumors that the Soviet embassy in Tehran would be seized, as its U.S. counterpart had been in November 1979. The Soviet party newspaper Pravda vigorously asserted that the Soviet people "resolutely reject" the charges against the Tudeh. The article went on to argue, speciously, that the Tudeh was unlikely to know any important secrets and, disingenuously, that the U.S. had instigated the sudden crackdown...
...eager to end. Iran, on the other hand, may expect the deteriorating environment to help split Iraq from Saudi Arabia and the smaller gulf states, which have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the Iraqi war effort. If such hopes are being nurtured in the Iranian capital of Tehran, they are unrealistic. Both sides in the Iran-Iraq war are, as a Western diplomat puts it, "obsessed with getting the maximum military and propaganda advantage" from the spill. Under the shadow of such rampant obstructionism, the nations of the gulf seem doomed to deal with an ever more visible...