10. A Radical Cleric Named Ayatollah Khomeini Spoke Out Against American Involvement in Iran
As the Iranian people began to lash back against the Westernizing reforms of the Pahlavi shah, Islamism became a galvanizing point for government discontents. Religious centers, particularly in the holy city of Qom, became centers of dissent. Religious clerics, who had previously been removed from public life and had disavowed political participation, were now indicative of the burgeoning popular uprising against the Shah and his Western-inspired reforms and particularly against the coup of Mohammad Mossadegh. One of the foremost of these religious clerics was Ayatollah Khomeini, the man who, in 1979, would spearhead the Iranian Revolution and become the Supreme Leader of the new Islamic Republic.
Beginning in 1965, Khomeini gained strong support against what he believed was the godless tyranny of the Shah, who served as an agent of the United States and furthered its imperialist goals. In January and February of 1970, during his exile in Najaf, Ayatollah Khomeini delivered a series of theopolitical lectures that became compiled into a book called Vilayat al-Faqih. This book outlined his vision of a proper Islamic government in Iran, how that government would be structured, and the theological, political, and historical rationale for such a government.