Second January Two Thousand Ten

Item 1: "The Radical Legacy of 1979 " by Andrew Djerejian

- three events had dire consequences with which we live today:
i. overthrow of the shah of Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini - Iran becomes a theocracy
ii. takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, by a group of Islamic extremists - Saudi Arabia embraces the Wahhabis
iii. Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - invasion mobilized a whole generation of Muslims, and turned Afghanistan into a flashpoint in U.S.-Soviet relations