Iran, 1953-1979: From the Shah to Islamic Revolution
The Dig
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Khomeini Taps Into This Reservoir of Myth and Symbolism and Memory and All These Sorts of Things
In 1964, Khomeini famously compares the Shah to the figure of the Umayyad Caliph Yazid. He's arrested after this speech, and then there are huge protests in Rome, but other cities sort of outraged at this. And senior clerics step in to recognize him actually as a source of emulation. That itself has been enshrined as kind of a key watershed in the islamous historiography.
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