1971 Shah Pahlavi’s extravagant twenty-five-hundred-year
Persian anniversary celebration at Persepolis brings
renewed denunciations from the exiled Khomeini
1977 Khomeini’s son Mustafa dies mysteriously
1978 The government’s publicized opposition to Khomeini
leads to demonstrations against the government; in the
summer, protest leaders in Qom call for a general strike;
demonstrations escalate into riots; in September, after the
government bans demonstrations, throngs of protestors
demand an end to the Pahlavi government and the return
of Khomeini from exile; martial law is declared; when
demonstrators gather in Tehran’s Zhaleh Square on
September 8 in defiance of the martial law curfew, armored
units break up the gathering with heavy casualties; in
October, Shah Pahlavi urges the government of Iraq to
expel Khomeini; the ayatollah relocates to Paris, from
where he accelerates his long-distance campaign against
the shah; in December, students attack Western businesses
and other targets; a curfew is declared, but with little
effect; by mid-December, millions are demonstrating in
Tehran; Shahpour Bakhtiar is appointed prime minister
of Iran
1979 In January, Shah Pahlavi flies to Egypt, allegedly on vacation;
at the command of Khomeini in Paris, an estimated
million demonstrators turn out in Tehran to oppose
Bakhtiar; on February 1, Khomeini returns to Tehran
in triumph as protests explode into total revolution; by
mid-month, Khomeini’s radical followers effectively have
overthrown the Iranian government; in April, Iran becomes
an Islamic republic; in November, two weeks after the
shah arrives in the United States for medical treatment,
Iranians demanding his forced return swarm the U.S.
Embassy in Tehran, taking fifty-two American hostages
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CHRONOLOGY