ABSTRACT
Ruhollah Khomeini views Israel as an American creation and the United States as the principal supporter of Zionism and the so-called reactionary conservative leaders in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic’s foreign policy has a strong moralist tone, based on Shia eschatology, Khomeini’s naive Weltanschauung, and the strong undercurrent of Persian patriotism. Khomeini’s alleged quote that the Gulf should not be called “Persian” or “Arabian” but should be referred to as the “Islamic” Gulf can be seen as evidence of the “gulf’ that distances Shia Iran from the Sunni Arabs. In the initial phase of the revolution, many Arabs welcomed Khomeini since he interjected Iran into the politics of the Arab-Israeli dispute. The increasing support for Iraq reflected the ties of Arab “brotherhood” and the reaction of the conservative Arab leaders to Khomeini’s declarations to export revolution to the Arab world.
