World: The Ayatullah's Hit Parade

Cassette tape recordings made by Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, which for years circulated clandestinely inside Iran, have become as vital as a daily newspaper for people who want to hear the very words of his policy statements.

In Tehran as well as in villages throughout the country, the cassettes can be bought at small bazaar shops and from vendors on the streets yelling "Khomeini tapes here!" The Ayatullah's recordings have become one of the few get-rich-quick ventures in Iran's shuttered economy. The tapes were mostly manufactured on recording machines in France and surreptitiously shipped to Iran.

Costing only about 200 each to make, they...

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