The Islamic revolution in Iran
The shah is overthrown, and Iran becomes an Islamic republic under the rule of the clergy—the first in modern times.
In January 1979, after a year of demonstrations and strikes, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi leaves Iran, and on 1 February Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Tehran from exile; ten days later the army goes over to the rising. In a referendum in April the country is declared an Islamic republic, and under the new constitution the highest power is given to the supreme jurist. The former allies—America and Israel—become the chief enemies; in November the American embassy is seized. The Jewish community of Iran, the most ancient of the communities of the dispersion, standing here since the Babylonian exile, shrinks within a few years from eighty thousand to twenty: most leave for America and for Israel.
Sources
Documents of the period
- the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979 — the order of power under the supreme jurist
Scholarship
- studies of twentieth-century Iran — the course of the revolution and the fate of the Jewish community after it
Basis: documents and evidence.