I r a n i n Wo r l d H i s t o r y
114
summer of 1981 they staged a series of bombings in which dozens of
senior Iranian political figures were killed, including the president, the
prime minister, and the chief justice. Khomeini’s future successor as
Supreme Leader, Ali Khamene’i, was also
wounded in one of these at-
tacks. The government responded by clamping down even harder on
suspected MEK members, executing hundreds.
Throughout the eight-year war with Iraq, ordinary Iranians were
subjected to extreme hardships. A generation of young men were sent
to the war front, where more than six hundred thousand were killed
and many more seriously wounded. Food staples were rationed, and
many in Tehran and other cities lived under
the daily threat of bom-
bardments and blackouts.
In 1986, the Iran-Contra Affair erupted, resulting in a scandal that
embarrassed both the US and Iranian governments. It was discovered
that the two had been engaged in secret negotiations in which the United
States agreed sell arms to Iran in violation of its own self-imposed
embargo. In return, Iran would help free American hostages being
held in Lebanon. The Reagan administration planned
to use money
received from Iran to covertly fund anti-government rebels in socialist
Nicaragua, an act the US Congress had forbidden. Public outrage at
these illegal goings-on erupted in both Iran and the United States, but
the government culprits on both sides eventually emerged unscathed.
In the wake of this fiasco, the United States began more openly to
support Iraq in its war against Iran, providing military intelligence and
putting American flags on Kuwaiti oil tankers that were supplying Iraq
to discourage Iran from attacking them. The MEK, now based in Iraq
and collaborating with Saddam’s regime,
attempted to invade western
Iran but were halted by Iranian forces. Most Iranians, regardless of
their views concerning their own government, have seen the MEK as
traitors ever since.
The Iran-Iraq war was finally concluded in 1988 without any per-
manent gains on either side, and Khomeini died the following year.
Shortly before Khomeini’s death, his anticipated successor Ayatollah
Hossein Ali Montazeri distanced himself from the Supreme Leader by
pointing out the government’s record of political arrests and execu-
tions: “The denial of people’s rights, injustice and disregard for the
revolution’s true values have delivered the
most severe blows against
the revolution. Before any reconstruction, there must first be a political
and ideological reconstruction.”
3
An outraged Khomeini responded by
quickly ousting Montazeri and appointing Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i as
his next-in-line.
Th e I s l a m ic R e p u b l ic o f I r a n
115
Another of Khomeini’s significant final gestures was to issue a
fatwa
(a formal legal opinion) to the effect that British writer Salman
Rushdie, born a Muslim in British India, had apostatized from Islam—a
ruling based on the allegedly blasphemous nature of Rushdie’s book
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