Khomeini

Regarding Khomeini's death: A weed has been uprooted in the garden of world affairs. VINCE GAROFALO North Hollywood

Tens of thousands of government supporters streamed into Tehran's Azadi Square on Thursday to commemorate the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, state television showed, as plainclothes and uniformed security forces faced off against anti-government protesters. The opposition news website Rahesabz.net reported that security forces opened fire on demonstrators north of the square, but there was no independent confirmation. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a defiant keynote speech broadcast live on television, condemning the West for its interference in the Middle East, hailing his nation's efforts to uplift the poor and oppressed and promoting his country's headlong drive to master nuclear technology, which has spurred international worries that Iran is pursuing atomic weapons.

The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said today that accepting a U.N. resolution calling for a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War was "worse than drinking poison," but that Iran's political leaders recommended it be done. It was the first statement from the 87-year-old leader since Iran announced Monday it was accepting the resolution passed by the Security Council on July 20, 1987.

Political turmoil built Sunday over the burning of an image of Iran's revolutionary founder, which was aired, in a controversial move, on state television. Accusations that the incident was carried out by anti-government demonstrators sparked protests as well as threats against reformist leaders. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday said reformist politicians and anti-government demonstrators had defiled the image of his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, during National Students Day protests last week.

The Ayatollah sentences novelist Salman Rushdie to death for "The Satanic Verses"; 12 European nations respond by imposing diplomatic sanctions on Iran. And what is the U.S. reaction? Khomeini's behavior is condemned . . . by the Writers Guild of America. Perhaps TV's fall season can be held up until he softens his position. JEFF M. ROSS Northridge

As an Iranian, I felt that James E. Akins' June 10 commentary reflected facts about the regime in Iran and the effect of Mohammad Khatami's presidency. All the news coming out of Iran through my friends and relatives points to worsening economic and political conditions, contrary to the wishful thinking by some about moderation, easing of life for the average Iranian and civilized behavior by the regime. The majority of Iranians have experienced the brutal nature of this (Khomeini's)

Israeli feminists Sunday sharply criticized a rabbinical court ruling that permitted a 60-year-old man to marry a second time because his first wife did not bear him sons. The man and his wife, 56, have three daughters, 20 to 23. The rabbinical court in the Negev desert city of Beersheba ruled that the man deserved another chance to fulfill the biblical injunction to "be fruitful and multiply."

I was extremely distressed to see a remark of mine taken out of context and used as my "reaction" to the Islamic brouhaha over Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses." (" 'The' Book Sells Out at County Bookstores," Orange County section, Feb. 24). Considering the length of time that I spent talking to your reporter, I find it absolutely inconceivable that my indignation over Khomeini's call for Rushdie's murder would be reduced to an ironic comment I made about the London Times best-seller list.

In his article "Iran Is Ripe for a Peaceful Overture" (Commentary, Nov. 17), Gary Sick tries hard to pass off one of his threadbare theories under the new label of "lessons from North Korea." Several points are in order. There is no need to recommend a policy of appeasing Khomeini's regime to the State Department, since the department has been pursuing this line for the past decade. Need I remind Sick of the Irangate debacle? It is no coincidence that Sick nominates Robert Pelletreau, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, as best suited to open a dialogue with Iran.

In 1977, arguably the last year of stability for the Shah of Iran's regime, Tehran was a city in the grip of future shock. The traffic was the world's worst, the air was polluted and housing was desperately scarce in a city whose population had quadrupled in less than a decade. But it was a vital, exciting place with much construction under way, a cosmopolitan cultural life and an emerging professional class that was beginning to offer opportunities to women as well as men.

Whispering like conspirators, the two cousins hook their thumbs in their belt loops, skim cocky eyes over the women and swivel, stiff-legged from their hips, like the men they have become. Across the room, and a few steps away on the gender spectrum, a man with shaggy hair wrinkles a pug nose in the mirror and struggles to drape a silky scarf over his head in the style of Islamic womanhood.

Ten years ago this month, Salman Rushdie received what he has called his "unfunny Valentine." On Feb. 14, 1989, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned "The Satanic Verses" as blasphemy, and called for Rushdie's death. The author, who lives in London, was forced into hiding. The novel's Japanese translator was murdered, and the Italian and Norwegian translators were attacked. A decade later, the 51-year-old Rushdie is, in many ways, a fortunate man.

School bells rang and helicopters showered flowers on the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on Monday as Iran marked the 20th anniversary of his return from exile. The bells--along with whistles from trains and ships at port--were sounded at 9:33 a.m., the moment the supreme leader's jet touched down in Tehran on Feb. 1, 1979. Helicopters also dropped flowers on Khomeini's golden-domed tomb inside a sprawling cemetery. After returning from 15 years of exile, Khomeini overthrew the U.S.

As an Iranian, I felt that James E. Akins' June 10 commentary reflected facts about the regime in Iran and the effect of Mohammad Khatami's presidency. All the news coming out of Iran through my friends and relatives points to worsening economic and political conditions, contrary to the wishful thinking by some about moderation, easing of life for the average Iranian and civilized behavior by the regime. The majority of Iranians have experienced the brutal nature of this (Khomeini's)

German officials are looking into information from a former top Iranian spy that the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the December 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, a magazine reported. The weekly Der Spiegel said the tip came from Abolghassem Mesbahi, a co-founder of the Iranian intelligence service who later went into exile.

Ahmad Khomeini, 50, son of Iran's late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A cleric and politician, the younger Khomeini lived for years in his father's shadow but had been expected to seize power after the ayatollah's death in 1989. Instead, he kept a low profile, apparently seeking to act as a powerbroker. In Tehran on Thursday six days after suffering a massive heart attack.

Few observers doubt Iran's genuine commitment to its "neither East nor West" foreign policy, or its intense antipathy to atheistic Marxism. But such are the pressures of geography, recent history and the current state of Iran's economy and its war with Iraq that Iran is finding it hard to avoid a tilt toward Moscow. Sharing long frontiers with a superpower, the weaker state can ill afford to be hostile toward its powerful neighbor.

Here are excerpts from former President Ronald Reagan's testimony as a defense witness in the Iran-Contra trial of his former national security adviser, John M. Poindexter . Richard W. Beckler, Poindexter's lead attorney, questioned Reagan about internal Administration meetings on the "Iran initiative": Question: Maybe you could tell the jury a little bit about what you recall about those meetings and the fact that there was disagreement and so on? Answer: Yes.