May 9, 1989
The one benefit of being a political leader in a nation scorned for its support of terrorism, savage repression of dissent and bloodthirsty approach to problem solving is the opportunity to rave mindlessly and not be put away. The speaker of Iran`s parliament has taken particularly vicious advantage of that opportunity, calling for Palestinians to murder U.S., British and French citizens wherever they can find them. Blow up factories, urged Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani. Hijack airplanes.
September 23, 1987
For the first time since it turned the Persian Gulf into a lethal obstacle course Iran has paid a price for its disdain for international law. The U.S. helicopters that fired on and disabled an Iranian vessel caught laying mines near an American anchorage off Bahrain acted responsibly and effectively. That three members of the Iran Ajr`s crew were killed is an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of Tehran`s mindlessly aggressive policies. In a standard tirade in front of the U.N. General Assembly, Iranian President Ali Khameini insisted the target was an unarmed merchant vessel and called the incident a reckless escalation of tensions in the gulf.
June 6, 1989
Few leaders in history have squandered the power to move their people as wantonly as did the Ayatollah Khomeini. For 10 years, he held Iran in a religious-political vise, in total control of a nation with vast natural wealth and an emotionally volatile populace eager to be led. When he died Sunday at the age of 86, he left his country a shambles, its economy in disarray, its government an international pariah and its youth sapped by the eight-year war...
November 4, 1989
Ten years after radical students seized the American Embassy in Tehran and began the 444-day hostage crisis that poisoned relations between the United States and Iran, the Islamic revolution ignited by the late Ayatollah Khomeini remains a movement fueled primarily by hatred. In observance of today`s 10th anniversary of the storming of the embassy, the fundamentalist clerics who rule Iran have whipped up a new wave of anti- Americanism by passing a law making it legal to arrest Americans anywhere and transport them to Iran for trial before no-jury Islamic courts.
May 28, 2006
Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War With Militant Islam. Mark Bowden. Atlantic Monthly Press. $26. 704 pp. If the struggle between tradition and modernity, tribalism and globalism, religious radicals and the world's sole superpower might be traced to a particular moment, it would be a baleful Sunday 27 years ago. On Nov. 4, 1979, hundreds of Iranian students, followers of the Shiite cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, overran and occupied...
December 22, 1986
Try to answer this question: What does the Ayatollah Khomeini, the crazed Iranian boss, have in common with Mr. Jones, an American citizen and taxpayer? The answer is that the president of the United States got mad at both of them. President Reagan was mad at Khomeini for Iran`s seizure of American hostages and its behind-the-scenes role in the deaths of our Marines. And he became angry at Mr. Jones for being one of the flight controllers who went on strike several years ago. Now for another question.