Word: shahs
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Every nation has thousands of people with more or less hidden sadistic instincts. They are eagerly used by various dictators (Hitler's Gestapo, Stalin's NKVD, the Shah's SAVAK, Pinochet's DINA, etc.) and carry out their new duties with sadistic pleasure. Some of them may happen to be M.D.s...
...Iran and Pakistan sent him more than $100,000 a year, most of which he distributed quietly to students and the needy. He regularly sent back to colleagues in Iran taped messages that were reproduced and distributed to mosques throughout the country. One particularly fiery sermon attacked the Shah's October 1971 grandiose celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy. (The estimated cost: $11 million.) Khomeini denounced the "imperial feast" and urged the clergy to rise up against this "counterpart of Attila the bloody...
...throughout Iran it was widely assumed that SAVAK was responsible. On the occasion of his son's death, the Ayatullah wrote a letter to the Iranian people that is now regarded as the crucial document of the revolution. After denouncing the "absurdities of this incompetent agent [the Shah] and his family of looters," Khomeini declared, "it is the responsibility of the Iranian army and its heads to liberate their country from destruction." Khomeini thus established himself as leader of the revolution by calling upon the armed forces to overthrow the Shah. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the letter...
...Shah's government then made three mistakes, the effect of which was to give Khomeini even greater prominence First, it tried to discredit him with implausible charges, such as contending that Khomeini was an Iraqi spy. Secondly in mid-1977 it asked Iraq to expel Khomeini, and Baghdad complied. The U.S., among other countries, refused to take him in, lest such an act offend the Shah. Since he was permitted automatic entry if he had a valid passport, he decided to go to France, whose government took the precaution of asking the Shah whether he had any objections...
Events in Iran now moved even more quickly than the Ayatullah himself could have expected. Within four months of his arrival in France, Khomeini was able to make his triumphant return to Iran, where he quickly replaced the post-Shah government with a Cabinet of his own. A month later he was back in his old house in Qum, where he has been ever since, trying to guide his country's unfinished revolution...