M
uhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, ruler of Iran, had a fortune
withdrawn from royal bank accounts in early 1979. On the
afternoon of January 16, dressed smartly in a three-piece suit,
he boarded the royal jet with his wife and entourage at the
Tehran airport. An avid pilot, the shah himself settled at
the controls and took flight. The destination: Egypt—one of
the few countries in the world where he knew he would find
a welcome. Soon after they were airborne, the shah turned the
plane over to his staff pilot and went to his personal quarters.
Perhaps he retreated there to rest. Perhaps he went to brood. Or
perhaps to weep.
It had been announced that the shah and his family were
taking a vacation, but the reality was that the Pahlavis would
never return. The shah knew he was seeing the last of his
homeland as his plane rose and banked above the capital city. He
carried among his valuables a box of Iranian soil, a melancholy
symbol of an ousted leader’s failed vision.
Masses of Iranians who celebrated his departure also knew
the shah was gone for good. They knew a very different leader
would soon arrive to replace him, and this made them
extremely happy. News that the shah’s plane had taken off was
broadcast immediately over the radio. Joyful shouting, singing,
dancing, and horn blowing rose to the skies behind him.
Two weeks later, an inbound Air France jet taxied to a halt at
the Tehran airport. From it, assisted carefully by the flight crew,
emerged a seventy-eight-year-old man. He was tall and bearded,
with a dark, chilling glare of a countenance born of years of
anger directed toward Shah Pahlavi’s regime. In a matter of days,
this man would dramatically alter the history of an ancient land
and deal the Western world a stunning jolt. He was Ayatollah
Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, an Iranian religious leader
who had been exiled for his radical activities since the early
1960s. Khomeini was accompanied by some fifty aides and close
associates, as well as more than one hundred journalists who had
come to cover a revolution in the making.
To those in power, the ayatollah’s return to Iran was more than
An Astonishing Transition in Power 3