Flying from Paris on an Air France jet, Khomeini returned to a Tehran convulsed by revolution against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. An estimated several million people lined the streets to welcome him. Ten days later, the Shah's government fell, and Khomeini became Iran's Supreme Leader, founding the Islamic Republic that has governed the country ever since.
Khomeini had spent years in exile, first in Iraq and then in a village outside Paris, sending cassette tapes of his sermons smuggled into Iran to fuel the growing opposition to the Shah's autocratic, Western-backed rule. His return flight was so anticipated that journalists worried the plane might be shot down; Khomeini reportedly told an aide that if the Shah's air force attacked, he wished to die a martyr.
The scene at Tehran was described by witnesses as a human sea — by some estimates the largest crowd in human history to that point, several million strong, flooding streets and rooftops. Khomeini went directly to the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery to deliver a speech honoring the revolution's dead.
Within days, the military declared neutrality, and on February 11 the provisional government collapsed. Khomeini's return marked the definitive turning point of the Iranian Revolution and reshaped the geopolitics of the Middle East for the following four decades.
Key people: Ruhollah Khomeini, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi