1. Ayatollah Khomeini Headed the New Islamic Government
Ayatollah Khomeini had long been considered a symbol of the popular resistance against the Shah. Even Iranians who were not particularly devout flocked to his teachings, not because they agreed with the religious precepts on which they were based, but because he was viewed as the one who would be able to overthrow the shah. Soon after the Shah fled, Khomeini returned to Iran after 15 years of exile in Turkey, Iraq, and France. He was welcomed with cheers by millions of Iranians, who now felt that the revolution would soon be complete.
On February 11, 1979, the regency government that Mohammad Reza Shah had left in place collapsed. A new government was organized under a constitution that was written mostly on the premise of Vilayat al-Faqih, Khomeini’s manifesto of how an Islamic government should be structured. Of central importance in this government structure was a Grand Faqih, a religious cleric who would oversee all the workings of the government and have the authority to override any jurisprudential decision. When elections were held to elect who the Grand Faqih, an overwhelming 99% of the population voted for Khomeini. He was now the leader of Iran’s revolutionary government. The Shah would not be coming back.
World leaders now had to determine how they would negotiate with this new government, which was founded almost entirely on the religious ideals of Ayatollah Khomeini. This challenge was exacerbated by a group of students from the University of Tehran, who laid siege to the American embassy and took dozens of diplomats hostage in what came to be seen as the enduring legacy of the revolution: the Iranian hostage crisis.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Iran: A Country Study,” ed. Helen Chopin Metz. GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987.
“Anglo-Persian Oil Company,” by F. Kazemi. Encyclopedia Iranica. August 5, 2011.
“Iran-United States Relations.” Wikipedia.