Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian Islamic revolutionary, politician, and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the main leader of the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and ended the Iranian monarchy.
Saddam Hussein was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and later its Iraqi regional branch. Ideologically, he espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, while the policies and political ideas he championed are collectively known as Saddamism.
Tariq Aziz was an Iraqi politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister (1979–2003), Minister of Foreign Affairs (1983–1991) and a close advisor of President Saddam Hussein. Their association began in the 1950s when both were activists for the then-banned Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. He was both an Arab nationalist and a member of the Chaldean Catholic Church.
Andrew Paul Gilligan is a British policy adviser and ex-journalist. He was, as of February 2024, a special adviser to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, having previously worked as a transport adviser to Boris Johnson both as Mayor of London and as Prime Minister.
Saif al-Islam Muammar al-Gaddafi is a Libyan political figure. He is the second son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his second wife Safia Farkash. He was a part of his father's inner circle, performing public relations and diplomatic roles on his behalf. He publicly turned down his father's offer of the country's second highest post and held no official government position. According to United States Department of State officials in Tripoli, during his father's reign, he was the second most widely recognized person in Libya, being at times the de facto prime minister, and was mentioned as a possible successor, though he rejected this. An arrest warrant was issued for him on 27 June 2011 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for charges of crimes against humanity against the Libyan people, for killing and persecuting civilians, under Articles 7(1)(a) and 7(1)(h) of the Rome statute. He denied the charges.
Rageh Omaar is a Somali-born British journalist and writer. He was a BBC world affairs correspondent, where he made his name reporting from Iraq. In September 2006, he moved to a new post at Al Jazeera English, where he presented the nightly weekday documentary series Witness until January 2010. The Rageh Omaar Report, first aired in February 2010, is a one-hour, monthly investigative documentary in which he reports on international current affairs stories. From January 2013, he became a special correspondent and presenter for ITV News, reporting on a broad range of news stories, as well as producing special in-depth reports from around the UK and further afield. A year after his appointment, Omaar was promoted to international affairs editor for ITV News. Since October 2015, alongside his duties as international affairs editor, he has been a deputy newscaster of ITV News at Ten. Since September 2017, Omaar has occasionally presented the ITV Lunchtime News including the ITV News London Lunchtime Bulletin and the ITV Evening News.
Musa Sadr al-Din al-Sadr was an Iranian-Lebanese Shia Muslim cleric and politician. In Lebanon, he founded and revived many Lebanese Shia organizations, including schools, charities, and the Amal Movement.
Nic Robertson is the international diplomatic editor of CNN.
The dynamic between the League of Arab States and the Islamic Republic of Iran has been ambivalent, owing to the latter's varying bilateral conduct with each country of the former. Iran is located on the easternmost frontier of the Arab League, which consists of 22 Arab countries and spans the bulk of the Middle East and North Africa, of which Iran is also a part. The Arab League's population is dominated by ethnic Arabs, whereas Iran's population is dominated by ethnic Persians; and while both sides have Islam as a common religion, their sects differ, with Sunnis constituting the majority in the Arab League and Shias constituting the majority in Iran. Since Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979, the country's Shia theocracy has attempted to assert itself as the legitimate religious and political leadership of all Muslims, contesting a status that has generally been understood as belonging to Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia, where the cities of Mecca and Medina are located. This animosity, manifested in the Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict, has greatly exacerbated the Shia–Sunni divide throughout the Muslim world.
Adel Alexander Darwish is a Westminster-based British political journalist, a veteran Fleet Street reporter, author, historian, broadcaster, and political commentator. Darwish is currently a parliament lobby correspondent based at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, the Palace of Westminster, specialising in foreign affairs, especially Middle Eastern politics; London University Graduate/Post Graduate 1965/1966–1967.
Jeremy Francis John Bowen is a Welsh journalist and television presenter.
David Joseph Blair is the Chief Foreign Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, having formerly worked for the Financial Times as Energy Correspondent, and The Daily Telegraph as a Foreign Correspondent and then Diplomatic Editor.
Ognian Boytchev, commonly known as Oggy Boytchev is a British journalist and independent producer with more than 20 years experience at the BBC in London. He has worked as a producer to the BBC World Affairs Editor, John Simpson. Born in Cherven Briag, Bulgaria, Boytchev defected to Britain in January 1986.
House of Saddam is a 2008 British docudrama television miniseries that charted the rise and fall of Saddam Hussein. A co-production between BBC Television and HBO Films, the series was first broadcast on BBC Two in four parts between 30 July and 20 August 2008.
The Habbush letter, or Habbush memo, is a handwritten message dated July 1, 2001, which appears to show a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq's government. It purports to be a direct communication between the head of Iraqi Intelligence, General Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, outlining mission training which Mohamed Atta, one of the organizers of the September 11 attacks, supposedly received in Iraq. The letter also claims that Hussein accepted a shipment from Niger, an apparent reference to an alleged uranium acquisition attempt that U.S. President George W. Bush cited in his January 2003 State of the Union address.
Ba'athist Iraq, officially the Iraqi Republic (1968–1992) and later the Republic of Iraq (1992–2003), was the Iraqi state between 1968 and 2003 under the rule of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. This period began with high economic growth, but ended with the country facing severe levels of socio-political isolation and economic stagnation. By the late 1990s, the average annual income had decreased drastically due to a combination of external and internal factors. UNSC sanctions against Iraq, in particular, were widely criticized for negatively impacting the country's quality of life, prompting the establishment of the Oil-for-Food Programme. The Ba'athist period formally came to an end with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the Ba'ath Party has since been indefinitely banned across the country.
Safia Farkash Gaddafi is a Libyan businesswoman. She is the widow of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, former First Lady of Libya and Representative of Sirte, and mother of seven of Gaddafi's eight biological children, some of whom participated in their family's regime.
Maher Abdul Rashid was an Iraqi military officer and member of the Al-Bu Nasir tribe. Rashid rose to prominence during the Iran-Iraq War, and was regarded as one of Saddam's best generals, serving as Chief-of-Staff of the Iraqis after being brought out of retirement, which he had been forced into in 1983. Rashid also played a prominent role in helping Iraq to regain her initiative during the war. Not all assessments of Rashid were so kind, and Ra'ad al-Hamdani refers to him as "one of the dumbest generals in the army".
The Iraqi invasion of Iran began on 22 September 1980, sparking the Iran–Iraq War, and lasted until 5 December 1980. Iraq attacked under the impression that Iran would not be able to respond effectively due to internal socio-political turmoil caused by the country's Islamic Revolution one year earlier. However, Iraqi troops became increasingly bogged down in the face of fierce Iranian resistance, which greatly stalled their advance into western Iran. In just over two months, the invasion was brought to a halt, but not before Iraq had managed to occupy more than 25,900 square kilometres (10,000 sq mi) of Iranian territory.
Ruhollah Khomeini's life in exile was the period that Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini spent from 1964 to 1979 in Turkey, Iraq and France, after Mohamed Reza Shah Pahlavi had arrested him twice for dissent from his “White Revolution” announced in 1963. Ayatollah Khomeini was invited back to Iran by the government, and returned to Tehran from exile in 1979.
