He came to symbolize everything the West found incomprehensible and baffling about the East: his intense, ascetic spirituality and air of otherworldly detachment; his medieval, theocratic mind-set, which drew its parallels and precedents from the Islamic world of the 7th century; the mystical certitude that he spoke in the name of God, his country and Muslims everywhere.
Yet when Tehran Radio announced early this week that the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's revolutionary zealot, was dead at 89, millions of his countrymen mourned the loss. They did so even though the movement he led plunged them into a devastating war with Iraq and left a legacy of turbulence at home and terrorism abroad. To his people, the patriarch with the baleful dark eyes and white beard had been the heart and sword of their revolution, the icon of implacable opposition -- first to the dictatorship of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and then to the U.S., which the Ayatullah relentlessly denounced as the Great Satan.
He translated his hatred of America into acts of terrorism and defiance that helped undermine one U.S. presidency and led a second into scandal. His followers held 52 Americans captive in the U.S. embassy in Tehran from November 1979 to January 1981, thus dealing a severe blow to the re-election chances of Jimmy Carter. Then, in what began as an effort to secure the release of American hostages held in Lebanon, the Reagan Administration became enmeshed in the Iran-contra affair, its gravest foreign policy blunder.
Khomeini vowed to pursue the conflict with Iraq to the "frontiers of martyrdom," and sent an estimated 900,000 Iranians, many of them not yet teenagers, beyond that frontier. But in August 1988, the loss of key positions forced Tehran to accept a United Nations-sponsored cease-fire in the eight- year war. It was, said the Ayatullah, a decision "more deadly than drinking poison."
Tehran's utter isolation in the world of nations had become apparent just two weeks before the cease-fire decision, when a U.S. frigate mistakenly shot down an Iranian jetliner with 290 people aboard: international response was notably muted. In the following months, leading Iranian politicians such as Parliamentary Speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 54, attempted to soften their country's radical image. But Khomeini would have none of it. Last February he prompted a worldwide outcry when he demanded the death of Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born, British author of The Satanic Verses, a book many regard as blasphemous to Islam. "It is incumbent on every Muslim to do everything possible to send him to hell," declared the Imam. An angry Britain broke off diplomatic relations with Iran, and many Western ambassadors were temporarily recalled from Tehran.
Khomeini's reassertion of radical Islamic rejectionism soon claimed his appointed successor, Ayatullah Ali Montazeri, 65, as a victim. Montazeri had harshly criticized the war with Iraq and did not endorse the killing of Rushdie. In late March he was forced to resign.