In The Name Of God: The Khomeini Decade
An accomplished journalist's swiftly moving account of the Khomeini revolution and the ensuing decade of theocratic power in Iran. The best and most revealing part of the book deals with the struggles within the regime and the close connections, both in ideology and in practice, between domestic and foreign policy. The author, wary of prediction, outlines the daunting tasks facing Khomeini's successors who, whatever their abilities, will not be able to rule in the name of God.
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Iran, in the view of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, has a great imperial past and a greater imperial future. In the next few years it is to assert its dominant role in the Persian Gulf region and the nearby reaches of the Indian Ocean. By 1990 it will attain the status of a Britain or a France in the global hierarchy of powers. Seeing this dream of the future, the Shah is already acting as if it were reality. Meanwhile, his neighbor across the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, talks less of empire but gradually extends its influence through the Arab world. Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the Saudi Minister of Oil and Industry, can virtually dictate the world price of oil as long as he speaks for his king. He can lead the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) or he can break it. He can please the Americans by being "moderate" on the oil price, and at the same time can remind them that he expects them to move Israel toward a settlement acceptable to the Arabs. The United States worries about its rising imports of oil, which increase its vulnerability to the decisions of OPEC, but takes comfort in the fact that it has a friend in Riyadh.
