After months of mass protests, strikes, and bloodshed, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi left Iran on January 16, 1979, ostensibly for medical treatment and vacation, but never to return as ruler. His departure paved the way for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's triumphant return from exile weeks later and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, reshaping the Middle East for generations.
The Shah's exit was choreographed as a temporary absence. He left Mehrabad Airport in Tehran in tears, reportedly kissing a bowl of Iranian soil handed to him, and flew first to Egypt, then Morocco, the Bahamas, and Mexico, in a humiliating odyssey as country after country grew wary of granting him permanent refuge given the political firestorm surrounding his rule.
His 37-year reign had been propped up by oil wealth, a modernization program called the White Revolution, and a feared secret police, SAVAK, that crushed dissent. But by 1978, an unlikely coalition of leftists, secular nationalists, and Islamist clerics united against him, filling the streets of Tehran in protests that sometimes numbered in the millions.
Two weeks after the Shah left, Khomeini returned from exile in France to a rapturous welcome, and by April Iran was declared an Islamic Republic. The Shah, suffering from cancer he had concealed for years, died in exile in Egypt in 1980. His departure remains one of the twentieth century's pivotal geopolitical hinges, reordering the Middle East and setting Iran on a collision course with the United States that persists to this day.
Key people: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi