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Khalkhali held antipathy towards pre-Islamic Iran. In 1979 he wrote a book “branding king Cyrus the Great a tyrant, a liar, and a homosexual” and “called for the destruction of the Tomb of Cyrus and remains of the two-thousand-year-old Persian palace in Shiraz, Fars Province, the Persepolis.” According to an interview by Elaine Sciolino of Shiraz-based Ayatollah Majdeddin Mahallati, Khalkhali came to Persepolis with “a band of thugs” and gave an angry speech demanding that “the faithful torch the silk-lined tent city and the grandstand that the Shah had built,” but was driven off by stone-throwing local residents.
