Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, 1979-95

the long version

With the destruction of Israel as its stated goal, the Islamic fundamentalist movement has embraced terrorism as the means to this end. In his bid to consolidate power in Iran after the Islamic revolution in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini, facing terrorist opposition, curbed it by extreme measures, gaining a taste for this form of warfare and using it as an arm of Iranian foreign policy to aid like-minded terrorist groups and embarrass Iran's national enemies. Since then, Iran has been at the heart of both the fundamentalist movement and the terrorism which seems inextricably linked to it. "The Iranian Connection" is a worldwide network of embassies and diplomatic mission - staffed with intelligence personnel - which shelters terrorists, stores their weaponry, and monitors potential targets. With this book, Edgar O'Ballance has written a readable investigative account of Iran's involvement in international terrorist activity.