Khomeini's Ghost: The Iranian Revolution and the Rise of Militant Islam November 19, 2009

Host: The Heritage Foundation. In February 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Tehran after nearly fifteen years in exile and received a hero’s welcome. Just as the new world order sought to purge the communist ideologies of the Cold War, the religious doctrine of Islamic fundamentalism emerged to pose an even greater threat to post-Iron Curtain stability—and Khomeini would mastermind it into a revolution. At this event Con Coughlin, author of Khomeini’s Ghost and one of Britain’s leading journalists, reflects on how an impoverished young student from a remote area of southern Iran became the leader of one of the most dramatic upheavals of the modern age.