The 1979 Iranian Revolution

In 1963, Iran’s ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, sought to transform his country into a modern, secular power. He called his program the White Revolution. It aimed to break up old feudal estates, redistributing land to millions of peasant families. For the first time, Iranian women gained the right to vote, and a Literacy Corps sent educated youths to teach in rural villages. But not everyone celebrated these changes. A cleric named Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini denounced the Shah as a ‘wretched, miserable man’ for his reforms and close ties to the West. For this speech, Khomeini was arrested and, in 1964, exiled from Iran. It was the beginning of a 14-year opposition from abroad that would ultimately bring down the monarchy itself.