decision turned out to be highly advantageous to his cause.
Some of the largest newspapers and magazines in the world,
including American periodicals, sent reporters to interview the
man who was rousing such an intense public frenzy against an
established government. During the four months he resided in
the Paris suburb of Neauphle-le-Château, Khomeini granted
an average of one interview a day. Now the whole world was
reading about what had been, until then, merely a national
crisis in an isolated Middle Eastern country. The attention of
many millions was drawn to Iran.
Journalist and author Elaine Sciolino, at the time writing for
Newsweek, described the scene in France:
In those first few days, few supporters and almost no journal-
ists visited Khomeini. Those supporters who did come
brought along mattresses, rugs, sleeping bags, and even lawn
chairs to make themselves comfortable. Some carried tape
recorders to preserve the sermons or to send cassettes of them
back home....
Khomeini said that the Shah must go. He said it over and
over, to thousands of Iranian pilgrims who came to pay court
and to hundreds of foreign journalists hungry like me for a
story. He spoke in riddles, mumbled as he talked, and didn’t
smile. His followers lamented his situation—an exile, a trans-
planted Persian, having no access to a mosque. Eventually the
Iranians rented a huge blue-and-white-striped tent, which
they pitched on the lawn and called a mosque.^26
Khomeini sent daily messages that were distributed by the
thousands throughout Iran. The people heeded his call. Laborers
in the oil industry—Iran’s national lifeblood—went on strike
within two weeks of Khomeini’s arrival in France. Protesters
disrupted banks, airlines, and Western-aligned businesses. In
response, Shah Pahlavi appointed a military government to
take over petroleum processing and to confront the radicals.
This measure seemed to succeed momentarily, but by the end
of the year, it was obvious to practically everyone that Iran’s
The Shah’s Government Collapses 51