ABSTRACT
Iran's attempts to export its revolution to other Muslim nations present unusual challenges to United States (US) national security analysts, policymakers, and administrators. Iran's revolution and sponsorship of other Islamic fundamentalist insurgencies test the applicability of models of regional conflict to the Middle East. Iran's fundamentalists aim rather to restore a powerful pan-Islamic state by unifying other Muslim nations under their own standard of Islamic revolution. In April 1990, for example, the US Department of State's annual report on state-sponsored terrorism noted that Iran alone had shown a marked increase in its reliance on terrorism. In explaining Iran's attempts to foster Islamic revolutions outside its borders the Manwaring model can help develop appropriate US proactive policy and responses. Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's institutional arrangements to safeguard the Islamic Republic make it nearly impossible for any Iranian government to renounce exporting the revolution or pursuing pan-Islamism for the foreseeable future.
