Quote:

Pariah said:
Are you saying that you knew the CIA assisted the Shah exactly when it happened and exactly when Ayatollah was excommunicated?



That would have been difficult P, since I wasn't born yet! But it was common knowledge in the mid '70s. I think the domestic turmoil started with the lavish party he through for himself to celebrate 3 millinea of the Persian Empire. It had an effect on people not unlike l'affair de collier 2 centuries prior in France. The whole affair (Iran's) was rather messy as I recall. But that is when I first heard of the CIA backed coup that led to the Shah's father's rise to the throne. Before the Shah's removal from power and prior to Khomeini's return from exile.

I don't know where you got the Ayatolla's excommunication from. It's the first I've heard about it. Are Muslim's subject to excommunication? Beats me. Khomeini was a Grand Ayatolla and I doubt there was anyone with the authority to do such a thing. It would be akin to excommunicating the Pope.

There was of course a flood of information after the Shah's exile. He found himself a very ill man who was persona non grata in every country in the world. The public anger over his admission to the USA was what led to the Hostage Crisis. That was really a financial dispute, too! But that's another story.

Good night.

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." John Stuart Mill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. Oscar Wilde He who dies with the most toys is nonetheless dead.