1979-2003 THE CLASH WITH ISLAM

1979 - 2003 The Clash with Islam. In 1979, Iran's Islamic Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan foreshadow a rise in Islamic radicalism. Violence intensifies, with the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the Persian Gulf war. By the mid-1990s, America faces a new enemy: Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. After the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. involvement in the Middle East is deeper than ever.

Key Figures in 'The Middle East and the West'

1979 - 2004: The Clash with Islam Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini 1900?-1989. Iranian Shiite leader who led the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979 and became Iran's supreme Islamic leader. The grandson and son of mullahs. From a young age, he became an outspoken opponent of Shah Reza Pahlavi.

Khomeini achieved ayatollah status in the 1950s; grand ayatollah status in the next decade. He preached a combination of Iranian nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.

His arrest in Iran in 1963 sparked anti-government riots. After a year in prison, he was expelled from Iran. Khomeini settled in Najaf, Iraq, and continued to call for the Shah's overthrow. Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, forced him to leave Najaf in 1978 and Khomeini took up residence outside Paris. His influence helped spark widespread demonstrations against the Shah that same year. The unrest forced the Shah to abdicate in early 1979, and more than a million people took to the streets to greet Khomeini when he returned three weeks later.

Later that year he was appointed Iran's supreme political and religious leader for life.
Saddam Hussein Born in 1937. Iraq's top leader until deposed by U.S. invasion in 2003. Born in Tikrit to a poor family, he spent his childhood as a street urchin. He joined the Baath Party in 1957 and took part in unsuccessful assassination attempt on then Iraqi leader Abdel Karim Qassim. Saddam fled to Egypt but returned to Iraq and spent several years in prison in the early 1960s. He became head of the Iraqi secret police when the Baath Party took power in 1968.

He became top Iraqi leader in 1979 and ordered the invasion of Iran in 1980 to seize oil fields, a move for which Saddam received tacit U.S. support from the Reagan administration. The war quickly became a stalemate and dragged on for eight years, during which he ordered extensive use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and Iraqi Kurdish villages.

Saddam ordered a surprise attack on Kuwait in August 1990. The first President Bush ordered an attack against Iraq in January 1991. Iraq suffered quick defeat, and then labored under 12 years of economic sanctions and forced disarmament.

President George W. Bush took the U.S. to war to depose Saddam in March 2003, and the Iraqi leader was seized by U.S. troops later that year. He is now under arrest in Iraq and awaiting trial for war crimes.

Osama bin Laden Born in 1957. Son of a Yemeni businessman who became rich as a building contractor in Saudi Arabia. Received a conservative religious education, and as young man went to fight the Soviets during the war in Afghanistan from 1980 to 1989. Bin Laden opposed the deployment of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia in 1990.

He returned to Afghanistan to organize al Qaeda, the Base, which became a loose-knit network of terrorist groups intent on fighting the U.S. presence and influence in the Islamic world. The group is believed to have been behind bombings in 1996 in Saudi Arabia, armed attacks on tourists in Egypt in 1997, and the destruction of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Bin Laden was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1994 and took up residence in Sudan until 1996, when he was expelled again, and left for Afghanistan. That year he issued a fatwa declaring war on Americans and Jews around the world. Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the remote mountainous tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.