Saudi Arabia would not usually engage in public squabbling with the US, with which it has a ‘strategic alliance’, and Washington would not usually humiliate one of its most valuable and dependable proxies in the Middle East.
Iranian president Sayyid Mohammad Khatami was re-elected to office on June 8, in the country’s eighth presidential elections since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Palestinian ‘president’ Yasser Arafat launched his expected crackdown on popular movements sustaining the Al-Aqsa Intifada last month. Dr Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi, the Hamas spokesman in Ghazzah, was arrested on April 28, reportedly for making ‘inflammatory’ statements.
The West’s enmity to Islam was brought home to Muslims in Britain earlier this month, when the British government published its list of proscribed “terrorist” organizations, most Islamic or Muslim.
The plight of the beleaguered Afghanis placed under UN sanctions on November 14 was relieved a week later, when Iran opened its border for trade with Afghanistan.
Last month’s brief troubles in Tehran - which were effectively ended by the mass rally on July 14 at which almost one million people came into Tehran’s streets to support the Islamic system and the Rahbar, Ayatullah Seyyed Ali Khamenei - were clearly manipulated by the enemies of the Islamic Revolution.
The Secretariat of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council condemned in unequivocal terms police-action against students on the night of Friday, July 9, in which one student was killed (not five, as some reports said) and several were injured at Tehran University.
Israel’s chief rabbi, Israel Lau, has been leading an international campaign for the release of 13 Jews arrested for spying in Iran. The case of the 13 Iranian Jews came to light last month when Tehran announced that they are to be tried after an intensive four-month investigation.
He came, he saw, he conquered. Mohammed Khatami, Iran’s philosopher president, brought no legions to Rome during his three-day state visit from March 9-11. Instead he came armed only with intellectual vigor and the authority of the Islamic State, and took the ancient capital of the west by storm.
The appointment last month of Dr Masoomeh Ebtekar as vice president in the cabinet of president Mohammad Khatami caused surprise among those unfamiliar with Iran.