supported Shah Pahlavi’s regime but because it supported Israel.
Khomeini was among the more militant Middle Eastern leaders
opposing Israel. “We shall soon liberate Jerusalem and pray
there,” he proclaimed to his people.^56 In 1982, Iran sent troops to
Lebanon, Israel’s northern neighbor, to help secure that country.
When the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, and other Western
targets were bombed in 1982 and 1983, Iranian operatives were
suspected to be behind the attacks.
Journalist Mohamed Heikal noted that Khomeini had a
“profound conviction that from the beginning the Jews have
hated Islam and have tried to frustrate it. When the state of Israel
was founded Khomeini immediately denounced it.”^57
While he opposed the United States and Israel, however,
Khomeini refused to turn to the former Soviet Union as a super-
power ally. For one thing, the Soviets had aided Iraq during the
1980s war. For another, the Soviets’ communistic government
denied the existence of God and repressed Muslims as well as
believers of other faiths. With Islam at its heart, the new Iran was
hardly likely to forge close ties with an atheistic nation.
Iranian hostility toward the Soviets dated to the nineteenth
century. Wars had been fought between Russia and Persia.
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the shah had granted
trade privileges to Russian merchants. Russia had even annexed
territory in the border region between the two empires. When
the Bolsheviks (Communists) rose to power in Russia in 1917,
they sent an army to Tehran to bully and subdue the shah.
While the Soviets intimidated many peoples and countries
during the twentieth century, Khomeini brazenly snubbed them
in defining Iran’s international stance. “The Soviet Union,” he
said, “can do nothing. It has proved it is capable of nothing.”^58
Other governments in the region, meanwhile, viewed the new
Iran with growing wariness and distrust. Some of Khomeini’s
lieutenants openly suggested that their leader be recognized as
the leader of all Shiite Muslims. The ayatollah himself branded
the government of Saudi Arabia as an unworthy steward of
Mecca, Islam’s holy city. Wrote historian William C. Cleveland:76 AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI
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