between Hafez Assad, then Syrian president, and the opponents of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran. Personal life Musa al-Sadr maintained strong family relations with political leaders in Iran, Lebanon and Iraq. He is related to noted Iranian individuals namely Sadeq Tabatabaei (his nephew), as well as Mohammad Khatami (his wife was a niece of Musa al-Sadr), and Ayatollah Khomeini's son Ahmad Khomeini (his wife was another of Musa al-Sadr's nieces). Sadr's son was married to Khomeini's granddaughter. His sister, Rabab al-Sadr, is a social activist who does charity work, and also a painter trained in Italy who earned a doctorate in philosophy, her paradigm being influenced by Søren Kierkegaard.' Charisma Musa al-Sadr has been referred to by Fouad Ajami as a "towering figure in modern Shi'i political thought and praxis." According to him, even American diplomats effusively described Musa Sadr after meeting him. He supports his claim by referring to a cable sent home by George M. Godley, a U.S. ambassador to Lebanon: "He is without debate one of the most, if not the most, impressive individual I have met in Lebanon. . . . His charisma is obvious and his apparent sincerity is awe-inspiring". In Lebanon, he had garnered significant popularity "due to his good rapport with young people." Standing at , scholar Fouad Ajami describes Sadr's charisma and magnetism as such: <blockquote>Lebanon has long been a country finicky about the looks, the aura, al haiba of a leader. The Shia in particular have been noted to be a people of some vanity. In the Shia tradition, the Imams were not only morally infallible men (an Imam was said to be masum, not subject to error), but also physically perfect beings. A blind man or a lame man would not have been accepted as an Imam. Musa al Sadr, a handsome man of striking looks, was true to his people's fantasy of what a man of piety and distinction and high birth slated for bigger things should look like. He was, in addition, a dazzling speaker in a culture that exalted the spoken word and those who could express in classical Arabic what was on the minds of others.<ref>Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon, Cornell University Press (2012), p. 48</ref></blockquote> and Sayyid Musa winked at traditions with a daring uncommon to men of his clerical calling and background. He was a