Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's spiritual and political leader, died today, 12 days after he underwent surgery for bleeding in his digestive system, the official Iranian news agency reported. He was believed to be 89 years old. ''The leader of the Islamic revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, passed away at a Teheran Hospital,'' the Islamic Republic News Agency reported in an urgent dispatch.
Yesterday, Iran had said Ayatollah Khomeini's health was deteriorating and urged the nation to pray for the leader, who underwent surgery last month for bleeding in his digestive system. Iran's state-run radio and television, monitored in Nicosia, had said the Ayatollah's condition was declining but it gave no details.
Both carried a brief statement from Ayatollah Khomeini's office that said: ''At 3:00 P.M. on Saturday a complication arose in the imam's condition, which the doctors are trying to control. We urge the nation to pray for the imam's health, and hope that their prayers will be answered.'' Earlier in the week, the television said a ''slight cardiac complication'' had arisen May 27, but that it was relieved the next day.
Iran's main opposition group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People's Holy Warriors, said last week that Ayatollah Khomeini suffered a heart attack on May 27. The statement by the Iraq-based group said the heart attack came five days after he underwent surgery on the duodenum, a part of the small intestine close to the stomach. The Mujahedeen's claim could not be independently confirmed.
Ayatollah Khomeini had been reported ailing since he suffered a heart attack in 1986. Since then he was rarely seen outside his home in the north Teheran suburb of Jamaran. But his hospitalization heightened already intense speculation about who will succeed Ayatollah Khomeini as leader of the theocratic state. Political turmoil has gripped the country since Ayatollah Khomeini launched a radical resurgence in February with his death decree against British author Salman Rushdie for allegedly blaspheming against Islam in his novel, ''The Satanic Verses.'' A purge of so-called moderates who apparently favored rebuilding ties with the West followed as the 10-year-old Islamic regime withdrew into its traditional isolationist stance.
Ayatollah Khomeini in March ousted his designated successor, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, 64, who had openly criticized the regime's shortcomings, and then appointed a 20-member committee to review the succession. But in the absence of a single personality who could match the patriarch's political and revolutionary authority, there was widespread speculation that Iran may be ruled by a collective leadership in the post-Khomeini era.
Source: New York Times
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