over the peace process. With the help of extreme
right-wing religious groups, he was able to form a
new government in June, offering no hope of con-
cession to the Palestinians. The government would
neither negotiate with the PLO nor allow a
Palestinian state to be created.
Yasser Arafat’s cause was seriously hurt when
he sided with Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War
after the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and he
lost his Arab friends in the Gulf who had sup-
ported the PLO with money. The Israelis, more-
over, could declare that the fears for their own
security were not exaggerated, as Scud missiles
from Iraq fell on Tel Aviv to the cheers of the
Palestinians. In August 1992 the Labour leader
Rabin, promising to seek peace, replaced the
‘hardline’ Shamir. Rabin turned out to be as
tough as Shamir in dealing with Palestinian fun-
damentalist terrorists belonging to Hamas. The
‘peace process’, begun under the Americans’ aegis
in Madrid in October 1991, made little progress
despite round after round of talks between
Palestinian and Israeli representatives. Rabin, in
total secrecy, now authorised Foreign Minister
Peres to negotiate directly with the PLO in
Norway. It would create new hopes for peace
only to be frustrated later.
The longest and bloodiest war in the Middle East
in the 1980s was the Gulf War between Iran and
Iraq, which in the course of eight years devastated
large areas of both countries and left at least half
a million dead and many more crippled. On 22
September 1980, Iraq attacked Iran, counting on
a swift victory. It was just twenty months after
Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Teheran in
triumph on 1 February 1979. Khomeini had
rapidly disposed of the politicians and generals
still loyal to the Shah’s regime, having them sum-
marily executed by secret revolutionary courts.
That conflict between the royalists and revolu-
tionaries had cost thousands of lives and left the
economy in ruins, though Khomeini continued to
be revered by the mass of the people.
The mosques with their local revolutionary
komitehs played a vital role during and after the
revolution. Once more, to the outside world Iran
appeared to be going through months of turmoil
and near anarchy, with radical Muslim groups,
Marxist and more moderate opposition politicians
struggling for control of the country, with the
ulema, or clergy, acting independently as a rival
faction. Khomeini, the acknowledged leader, at
first kept in the background. For a time the state
was confusingly divided between a prime minis-
ter and a formal government and the Islamic
Revolutionary Council. But between 1979 and
1982, the Council gradually took over real power,
first by creating its own political party, the Islamic
Revolutionary Party, then by setting up an Islamic
militia of Revolutionary Guards. During the
summer of 1979 the Islamic Revolutionary Party
dominated the Assembly, which produced a con-
stitution for the Islamic Republic. This laid down
that religious leadership would guide the country.
There could be no other leader than the ‘Grand
Ayatollah Iman Khomeini’, who was also the
commander-in-chief and head of the Supreme
Defence Council. He could declare war and
peace; he was empowered to approve and appoint
the president on his election by the Assembly; he
was the chief justice. The ordinances of Islam
were supreme, but the believers of Islam would
be free to debate their differences.
Khomeini invariably sided with the radicals.
Soon revolutionary Iran was enmeshed in fight-
ing the Kurds, the most nationalistic ethnic
minority in the country. The Kurds’ success in
October 1979 forced Teheran to accept a com-
promise ceasefire. A new enemy was branded just
a short while after – the American ‘Satan’.
Khomeini, fearing a US-backed attempt to over-
throw the Islamic Revolution and restore the
Shah to power, demanded the Shah’s extradition
to stand trial. The Carter administration, which
had allowed the Shah to enter a New York hos-
pital, refused. Directly encouraged by Khomeini,
militant students thereupon seized the American
Embassy on 4 November 1979 in a well-planned
operation to capture secret US documents, in a
bid to compromise the US as well as internal
opponents. Fifty-two Embassy staff were held
hostage for fifteen months until 21 January 1981,
the day of Reagan’s inauguration. In the mean-
time, rivalries among clerics and politicians in
Iran appeared to present a picture of complete
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CONTINUING TURMOIL AND THE WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST 911
