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Khomeini was against 'death to America'
Iran's ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has raised controversy after claiming in a new book that revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not favour the mantra of "Death to America". The revelation in the latest edition of Rafsanjani's diaries comes amid growing strains between Tehran and Washington but also after landmark talks with US officials on security in Iraq. The slogan "Death to America" symbolises Iran's enmity with the US and is chanted by the faithful after Friday prayers and often during speeches by the Islamic republic's top leaders. The comment comes in an entry from July 5, 1984, five years before Khomeini's death and in the midst of the 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which cost a million lives on both sides. Posted by: Fred 2007-08-21 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=196747 |