THE TIDE TURNS 341
despotism but for his modernism-for promoting the western dress code,
favoring women's rights, allowing nightclubs to be built in Iran, and so on.
Khomeini also tapped Shi'i tradition to construct a novel political doc-
trine: that government power properly belonged in the hands of the
world's single chosen representative of the Hidden Imam, a chosen one
who could be recognized by his immense religious learning and the rever-
ence that other learned scholars had for him. Such a man was a foqih, a
leader with authority to legislate, and in the modern world, Khomeini sug-
gested, he was that man.
The Shah deported Khomeini in 1964, but the stern cleric ended up in
neighboring Iraq, from which base he directed a growing army of Iranian
religious zealots loyal to him.
The Six Day War of 1967 had reinforced a Muslim belief that the United
States headed a new imperialist assault on Muslim civilization with Israel
as its beachhead. After all, Israel's strength depended on U.S. arms and
support. This conclusion was underscored in 1973, when Nasser's succes-
sor, Anwar al-Sadat, started a fourth Arab-Israeli war by attacking Israel
during Yom Kippur, a solemn religious holiday in Judaism. This time,
Egyptian arms and troops scored sweeping early gains, but Israel received
a sudden massive shipment of weapons from the United States and this
turned the tide; so Israel triumphed again.
As it happened, during this Arab-Israeli War, the Organization of Pe-
troleum Exporting Countries was meeting to conduct its routine busi-
ness of coordinating production and pricing policies. OPEC was
founded in 1960, and of its twelve member nations, nine were Muslim
countries. At the very moment that OPEC leaders were gathering to
confabulate, the masses in their countries were marching and raging
about the military humiliation Israel and the United States were dealing
the Arabs. OPEC had not been particularly political up to this point, but
at the 1973 meeting, its members decided to use oil as a weapon for
striking back. They announced an embargo on shipments to countries
that supported Israel.
That move sent a shock through the industrialized world. In Oregon,
where I lived at the time, gas was quasi-rationed: people could buy it only
on alternate days, their turn determined by whether their license plate