Iran in World History

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s exiled religious leader, emerges from an 
Air France plane after his arrival at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, on February 
1, 1979. Along with a retinue of family, aides, and journalists, he returned from 
Paris after fourteen years in exile. 
Associated Press/FY 7902010797

---

I r a n i n Wo r l d H i s t o r y
112
A new constitution drafted that summer offered some initial clues. 
The document provided for an elected parliament, but with ultimate 
power reserved for Khomeini. This was in keeping with his own 
unique theory of 
velayat-e faghih
, or “Guardianship of the [Supreme] 
Jurist”—the principle that the head of government should be the per-
son most qualified in Shi‘ite jurisprudence. Khomeini had earlier writ-
ten in a treatise on Islamic government (which few ordinary Iranians 
had read), “Since Islamic government is a government of law, those 
acquainted with the law, or more precisely, with religion—that is, the 
foghaha
—must supervise its functioning. It is they who supervise all 
executive and administrative affairs of the country, together with all 
planning.”
1
The unelected nature of the post of 
faghih
, which was 
tailor-made for Khomeini himself and did not clearly specify a pro-
cedure for succession, imposed a constitutionally embedded limit on 
how far the democratic process in Iran could evolve in the years to 
come.
While the revolutionary government struggled to find its bearings, 
civil disorder prevailed throughout the country. Ad hoc neighborhood 
patrols—called 
komiteh
s—broke into homes in search of alcohol and 
other items forbidden under Islamic law. These same unaccountable 
vigilante groups busily rounded up opposition figures and individuals 
with real or suspected ties to the former regime, many of whom were 
executed after kangaroo trials.
Following the admission of the shah to the United States for medi-
cal treatment in late October 1979, on November 4 a band of radi-
cal students stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took fifty-two US 
diplomats hostage. The hostages would not be released until 444 days 
later, after the swearing in of Ronald Reagan as US president in January 
1981. This “hostage crisis” caused a permanent rift in Iran-US rela-
tions, with successive governments in each of the two countries casting 
the other as the quintessential enemy and source of evil in the world. 
The United States was labeled “the Great Satan,” and Iranians were 
encouraged to tread on American flags painted on the ground.
The hostage crisis, which had resulted from a violation of the US 
embassy grounds in contravention to international law, led Iranian 
Prime Minister Bazargan to resign in disgust. Bazargan later expressed 
his dismay at the ongoing course of Iran’s revolution in an open let-
ter to parliament in 1982: “The government has created an atmo-
sphere of terror, fear, revenge and national disintegration. . . . What 
has the ruling elite done in nearly four years, besides bringing death 
and destruction, packing the prisons and the cemeteries in every city, 

---

Th e I s l a m ic R e p u b l ic o f I r a n
113
creating long queues, shortages, high prices, unemployment, poverty, 
homeless people, repetitious slogans and a dark future?”
2
The Islamic Republic elected its first president, Abo’l-Hasan Bani 
Sadr, in January 1980. Prior to the election, Khomeini had banned most 
of the country’s political parties. The only exceptions were the Islamic 
Republic Party (IRP—a party he himself had formed), Bazargan’s FMI, 
and the leftist Tudeh and Feda’i parties. Khomeini would soon enough 
set his sights on eliminating the leftist parties as well.
Khomeini first denounced the Mojahedin-e Khalgh (MEK), an 
ostensibly Islamic group that had supported him throughout the rev-
olution. Vigilante gangs of