Khomeini's Ghost

From the bestselling author of Saddam comes the definitive biography of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution and how his fundamentalist legacy has forever influenced the course of Iran's relationship with the West. 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. Khomeini's Ghost is the account of 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, and how his radical Islamic philosophy now lies at the heart of the modern-day conflict between Iran and the West. Con Coughlin draws on a wide variety of Iranian sources, including religious figures who knew and worked with Khomeini both in exile and in power. Both compelling and timely, Khomeini's Ghost is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand what lies at the center of many of the world's most intractable conflicts.