By July 1988, after suffering crippling damage to its econom- ic infrastructure, enduring an immense loss of human life, and fearing more direct intervention by American and inter- national forces in favor of Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Kho- meini agreed to a UN-sponsored ceasefire, effectively ending the war.12 The Iran-Iraq War galvanized the Iranian people, helped Khomeini consolidate power, and consequently shaped the construction of Iran in Islamic terms.13
Both Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini used Islam to whip up nationalistic fervor and generate domestic support for their regimes. Yet Saddam was especially fearful of Kho- meini’s capacity to frame Islam in a way that would threat- en him by bolstering alliances between Iran’s majority Shi’a population and the Shi’a footsoldiers who formed the bulk of Iraq’s conscript army as well as the majority of Iraq’s total population.14 As a means of unifying Iranians and promoting Islam around the world, Khomeini’s active attempts to export the Iranian Revolution to other Muslim countries continued until his death on June 3, 1989. Just as Islam increasingly became the catalyst for the 1979 revolution, it also acted as a unifying force for Iranians throughout Khomeini’s tenure as supreme leader.