Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

by Kim Ghattas

Another article, titled NEW KHOMEINI ATTACK, focused on the ayatollah’s call for the shah to be sent back to Iran for trial, and his threat to put the American hostages on trial as spies. In the bottom half of the front page, a wide picture of the Ka’aba in the courtyard of the sacred mosque was accompanied by an article about the unfolding crisis in Saudi Arabia, reporting “Mecca Mosque Seized by Gunmen Believed to Be Militants from Iran.” In the piece, American officials speculated that the takeover was a response to Khomeini’s call for a “general uprising by fundamentalist Moslems in the Middle East.”