All language subtitles for The.Last.Persian.Shah.2019.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

(crowd chanting)

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In 1979, a revolution topples Iranian ruler,

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Official YIFY movies site:
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And with that, a monarchy of more than 2,500 years.

(speaking foreign language)

(crowd chanting)

That's the way authoritarian regimes fall.

First gradually and then suddenly.

(crowd chanting)

The Shah's mistake was to want to do too much too fast.

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,

Persia's last emperor,

was a key figure in world politics

in the second half of the 20th century.

His fiercest opponent Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini.

The Ayatollah becomes the bearer of hope

for all those who are against the Shah.

(speaking foreign language)

They became very fierce antagonists absolutely.

And the Shah developed an almost obsession with him.

Their rivalry lasted

for almost their entire lives.

In the end, the Shah is defeated.

The Ayatollah is victorious

and with him Islamic fundamentalism.

A new challenge for world politics.

(crowd chanting)

In September, 1941,

a young man becomes the new ruler of Iran.

At just 21 years of age Shan Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

is sworn in as the new Head of State

in the Iranian parliament,

in the middle of the second world war.

His father, Reza Shah Pahlavi had remained neutral,

but he made no secret of his sympathies for the Nazi regime.

The allies demanded his resignation.

Since Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union,

the British and the Americans depend on Iran

for the transport of heavy war materials to Russia

for the fight against the German Reich.

(speaking foreign language)

Mohammed Reza had been prepared for this task

by his father from an early age.

Among his siblings,

he has a special role as Crown Prince.

His father selects his playmates

and sends him to a Swiss elite boarding school

to give him a Western education.

Finally, he tells him who to marry.

It's the Egyptian Princess Fawzia.

With the arranged marriage between the two dynasties,

the father wants to reinforce the Pahlavi's power in Iran.

And he was a very, very powerful charismatic figure,

who completely dominates the son's life.

300 kilometers Southwest of Tehran,

the Oasis town of Khomein is situated.

In 1902, Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini

is born in a house on the outskirts of that town.

The youngest of six children.

He never meets his father.

His father is murdered when he's five months old

under suspicious circumstances.

Khomeini will later hold Reza Shah accountable.

Until the end of his days Ayatollah Khomeini

thought that Reza Shah personally had intervened

to save the murder.

That was that bitterness left in him,

because in his writings, you know,

every now and then he says,

"Those whose fathers have been killed by Reza Shah."

Khomeini grows up without a father.

This will impact him all his life.

His mother takes Khomeini to a wealthy aunt

who makes sure he receives a good education.

At five years of age, Khomeini starts school.

A village teacher teaches him how to read and write.

He's a fast learner.

Among his classmates he's the most gifted.

While others play, he studies and reads the Quran.

Before Reza Shah was forced to abdicate,

he had started extensive reforms in Iran.

He wanted Persia to become a modern state.

This included the fact

that women were no longer allowed to wear a Chador,

the traditional veil.

The clergy saw this as an assault

on religious matters and protested.

For Khomeini who was studying Islamic theory of law by then,

this was a fundamental violation of the principles of Islam.

(speaking foreign language)

Reza Shah's abdication

under pressure from the allies

must have been greatly gratifying for him.

He demands that Iran will now be ruled

according to Islamic law again.

This demand doesn't have any effect yet.

Reza Shah dies in exile in South Africa in 1944.

If not before, now with his son transferring the body

all eyes are on the new Shah.

People wonder how he will solve

the conflict with the clergy,

which he inherited from his father.

So far, he'd been perceived

as rather restrained by the public.

As Shakespeare says,

"Some have greatness thrust upon them

and some seize greatness."

Mohammad Reza Shah had the monarchy thrown upon him.

And there was a big difference

with someone who goes and grabs power

and creates the modern state,

with someone who was essentially a reluctant king.

The young Shah acts surprisingly resolutely.

Like his father,

he wants to modernize state and society

but end his father's confrontational course with the clergy.

His subsequent opponent Khomeini

now teaches Islamic theory of law.

He finds a sympathetic ear in younger students

who become radicalized.

One group names themselves Fadaiyan-e Islam

These martyrs of Islam are Shiite fundamentalists.

They come from the ghettos of Tehran

and demand the establishment of a theocratic state

on the basis of the Quran.

Any Western influence is to be banned.

Women must wear veils in public again.

Within a couple of years,

they really became very important.

Because they first of all,

they assassinated a top intellectual Mr. Ahmad Kasravi

who campaigned against Islam as a whole.

Then they proceeded further

and assassinated the prime minister General Razmara.

And Khomeini was the cleric who gave them clerical cover

because you know in Islam or at least in Shiite Islam,

you can't just go and kill somebody

unless a clerical authority writes a fatwa.

For example, like Khomeini wrote against Salman Rushdie.

In early 1949,

there's an assassination attempt on the Shah as well.

It was probably carried out by a terror group

but this has never been proven.

The Iranian parliament blames

the Moscow following Tudeh Party and bans it.

This comes in useful for the Shah,

for communist ideology

is equally as suspicious to him as is radical Islam.

His political path is directed towards the West.

I'm looking forward with the keenest anticipation

to all that I have to experience

here in the greatest of the democracies in the free world.

In November, 1949,

the American President Harry S. Truman

and the American people

welcome Shah Mohammad Reza exuberantly,

but not exactly selflessly.

They want to secure access to the huge oil reserves in Iran.

The Shah on the other hand

needs support for his plans

to modernize Iran from the bottom.

He's interested in all technical innovations

like the Hoover Dam.

Not everyone likes his enthusiasm for the West.

(speaking foreign language)

The global economic boom after the war requires fuel, oil.

In Abadan near the Persian Gulf,

the world's greatest refinery is built.

Since the beginning of the 20th century,

oil production had been mainly in British hands.

In Iran, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company,

is like a State within a State.

When the Iranian Parliament

decides to nationalize the oil industry in March, 1951,

Great Britain pulls the oil plug on Iran.

Many British experts have to leave the country.

The takeover of the oil facilities by a national company

is cheered on boisterously,

but the oil embargo soon forces

the country's economy to its knees.

Extremist parties like the communist Tudeh Party

take advantage.

They become very popular.

The Shah temporarily flees into exile

out of the line of fire.

The Mullahs and their followers

and different political groups like the communists

who aim for the abolition of the monarchy,

and a People's Republic,

fight for dominance in Iran.

The Shah only manages to stay in power

through the intervention of the USA.

The American secret service CIA,

supports him with a lot of money

and helps him to establish his own secret service,

the SAVAK.

Our Shah became a kind of Roman Caesar.

You know, involved in day-to-day business,

involved in day-to-day wars.

And if like the Roman Caesar,

you become involved in day-to-day

like Julius Caesar, somebody will kill you.

During this time,

Khomeini doesn't make any public statements

on political questions.

He withdraws to his house in the Holy City of Qom,

where he lives with his wife and children.

Only his most dedicated followers come to see him,

but they don't say a word

about what Khomeini discusses with them either.

In solitude, the clergyman continues his work on his ideas

for the Islamization of the Iranian State,

discreetly but with confidence.

He is extremely confident when he meets the Shah in person.

On behalf of the Grand Ayatollah,

Khomeini asks the Shah to pardon one of the assassins

from the terror group Fadaiyan-e Islam successfully.

The Shah definitely wants dialog with the Mullahs.

He keeps going on pilgrimages to Mecca in Saudi Arabia,

Islams central pilgrimage site.

As a Muslim, he shows respect for Islam

and accepts the religious authority of the Imams.

But such publicity performances

always serve multiple interests.

His religious feelings I think came from his mother.

We know his mother was very religious.

His father clearly was not.

His politics towards religion

has nothing to do with his religiosity.

His politics to religion has to do with his fear

that the greatest threat to Iran

will come from the communist.

And that the way to fight the communist

is by strengthening religion

and that's exactly what he does.

Any ally in the fight against the influence

of the communist Soviet Union is fine with the Shah.

Therefore, he tries to win over the clergy

which were traditionally anticommunist and monarchist.

It's a calculation which won't add up.

He certainly thought that

that ideological backing was religion.

And that's again, another mistake that he made.

Religion particularly as incarnated by the Shia clergy

could never have become

the ideological framework

on which to build modernization and westernization.

In December, 1959,

there are pompous festivities in Tehran.

Tabloid reporters from all over the world

fight for the best picture

of Mohammad Reza Shah and Fara Diba.

After two divorces, the new queen needs to produce

the desired successor to the throne

so that the Pahlavi Dynasty can live on.

Fara Diba becomes an influential woman

at the side of her husband.

She also accompanies him

on his trip to America in April, 1962,

where the couple are received fanatically.

The Shah seeks to deepen Iranian-American relations

with President John F. Kennedy.

Both agree that only a strong military

can fend off the latent threat of the Soviet Union.

Arming Iran is a done deal.

For the Americans, it's a valuable business.

Weapons for oil.

(intense dramatic music)
(plane engines roaring)

(speaking foreign language)

In the 1960s,

Iran was still a developing country.

Most of the people were farmers without their own land.

The land belonged to feudal masters and land barons

including a number of mullahs and religious trusts.

On the 11th of January, 1963,

the Shah introduces an extensive program of reforms.

He calls it the White Revolution.

Its aim is to markedly improve

the conditions of life for the people.

(speaking foreign language)

A national referendum

strengthens the ambitious program.

Which includes the abolition of the feudal system,

privatization of state-owned companies,

the fight against illiteracy,

and the introduction of women's voting rights.

Women are not allowed to take part in the referendum yet.

However, they flock to the polling stations

to demonstrate their approval.

He wanted Iran to modernize,

the White Revolution was intended to make Iran better.

And it did.

In many, many ways it did.

It ended feudalism in Iran.

That's not an easy thing to do.

(intense dramatic music)

The starting point of the White Revolution

was a land reform

against the determined resistance of the clergy.

The Shah hands over more than 500,000 hectors of land.

An area twice the size of Luxembourg,

to some 30,000 destitute families.

(speaking foreign language)

(intense dramatic music)

In order for children to learn

reading, writing, and maths,

soldiers teach them in village schools.

Adult farmers and nomads have to go back to school.

The Shah involves all strata of the population

in his campaign.

(intense dramatic music)

(speaking foreign language)

Khomeini takes on the role

of a mouthpiece for a group of Mullahs

who reject this policy as pro-western.

(intense dramatic music)

(speaking foreign language)

(speaking foreign language)

Khomeini takes advantage of his gain in power.

He abandons his hitherto withdrawn position

and openly opposes the Shah's politics.

For the first time he publicly warns him

not to carry on with his father's ways.

Khomeini signed a couple of letters

directly addressed to the Shah.

And the Shah gave a couple of lectures,

speeches directly responding to him.

I've coded those at length in the Shah Book,

and they're remarkable.

Khomeini for his defiance.

Telling the Shah,

"Boy, don't do something

so that I throw you out of the country, like your father."

And the Shah saying, "These little..."

The word is like ants,

like who survive in feces.

We're not going to let them rule this country.

Strengthening the role of women

in Iranian society

is an integral part of the White Revolution.

Iranian women grasp this opportunity

to make public use of the newly acquired rights

and the associated self-confidence.

Women can not only vote now,

they can also become political candidates.

For Iranian women,

this is a milestone on their path to emancipation.

(speaking foreign language)

But there was a lot of resistance.

The first revolution in 63 happened,

led by Khomeini,

happened specifically on this particular item,

of the voting decree.

For Khomeini and his followers,

the new role of women in politics and society

is a threat to the foundation of their faith.

They mount a counter attack.

Khomeini denounces corruption, state violence

and the torture used by the state secret service, SAVAK.

He threatens the tyrant of our time,

in a speech with a black reaction to the White Revolution.

(speaking foreign language)

There are demonstrations

and counter-demonstrations.

The Shah deploys the military to the Holy City of Qom.

Blood is shed.

Khomeini is arrested and sentenced to death.

Thanks to the pleading of numerous clerics

the sentence is changed

and Khomeini is exiled to Najaf in Iraq.

In the meantime,

the implementation of the White Revolution

is more difficult for the rural population than expected.

The farmers now have their own fields to till,

but they often lack seeds, water

and modern agricultural machines.

(speaking foreign language)

If you're going to end feudalism,

and you're going to bring millions of people into the city,

you have to be prepared for it.

You have to think

who is going to teach these people

the political rules of the new game?

And then he made it impossible

for anyone other than the clergy

to have a political organization in Iran.

At first, Khomeini completely secludes himself

in his exile in Najaf,

a stronghold of Shiite Islam in Iraq.

At 60, he believes he's finished.

He's isolated.

Many Iraqi scribes

don't want to have anything

to do with his political activities.

He immerses himself

in his studies of the Holy scriptures again.

He only communicates with very few of his pupils

to stay abreast of the situation in Iran.

One of his few pillars is his family

who had followed him into exile.

(intense music)

He was this distant figure,

very little interest in anything

other than his mosque and his books.

He never went once,

two blocks from his house,

the other side to see a river.

He went to his mosque and came home for 14 years.

Meanwhile in Iran, in October, 1967

the Shah continues the grandeur of the old days.

The Shah had always stressed

that he wanted to achieve something for his country

before ascending the peacock throne with all honors.

Now he has himself crowned Emperor in Tehran.

The clergy supports him.

The Shah has always factored the clergy

into his public appearances.

He knows how important it is,

especially for the ordinary people

to reference the religious foundation of the ruling dynasty.

Now it seems he has arrived.

He is the Shahan Shah, the King of Kings.

And he also crowns his wife Empress,

something that has never happened before

in Persia's long history.

(speaking foreign language)

In May and June, 1967,

the glamorous couple is on a State Visit in West Germany.

They are welcomed by

Federal President Luca and Federal Chancellor Kissinger.

The visit mainly serves economic interests.

The Shah visits the big steel companies

along the Rhine and Rhone rivers,

because he needs support

for the industrialization of his country.

For instance, with the construction of new reservoir dams

for the irrigation of farmland.

It's a lucrative opportunity for the German economy.

(speaking foreign language)

When the ruling couple visits the German Opera in Berlin,

the ugly face of the Shah regime is revealed..

Members of the secret service, SAVAK,

attack demonstrators who are protesting

against suppression and torture in Iran.

The situation escalates.

The visit of the Shah and the protests against his politics

mark a turning point in the history of West Germany.

In Tehran,

the Shah's monument which Farah Diba had commissioned,

is meant as an architectural expression

of the new modern identity of the empire.

In the Old Imperial City of Persepolis on the other hand,

the Shah commemorates

the Persian Empire's 2,500 years of history

with an ostentatious celebration.

In 1971, the biggest party in the world

is held in the middle of the desert.

Monarchs, Heads of State and Dictators attend.

The population is not invited.

(trumpets blaring)

It was one of those things that the intention was well,

but the execution went so much in exaggerated way

mixed with cronyism and corruption

that I think it backfired on him.

In order to lead

the White Revolution to success,

the Shah upgrades the technology of the country,

with the help of capital assistance from abroad.

He invests billions in electrification

and numerous other industries.

He wants Iran to get in with modernity

and become great again,

just like the Persian empire was historically.

I think that our country,

in the next 10 years will be what you are today.

In the next 25 years,

according to other people I'm not saying that,

will be among five most prosperous countries of the world.

To this end,

the Shah also invests in nuclear energy.

US, American, and French companies

want to do this lucrative deal.

In the end however,

it's West German businesses who sign the deal with Iran.

(speaking foreign language)

The motivation came from the necessity of his time.

Whether we like it or not,

modernization is to a large extent westernization.

You can't modernize without westernizing.

The capital Tehran in particular,

opens itself up to the cultural lifestyle of the West

and becomes a modern metropolis.

Veiled women are now hardly to be seen anywhere in the town.

Young people are allowed to travel without restrictions

and educate themselves.

They enjoy all the advantages of a cosmopolitan city

and show no inhibitions.

On the other hand,

the political power structures don't change at all.

They remain traditionally monarchist

and tailored to the Shah.

(speaking foreign language)

(speaking foreign language)

In contrast, in Najaf in Iraq,

time seems to have stood still.

Khomeini holds lectures for a small circle of students.

He thinks about what an Islamic legal system could be like,

with the clergy taking on a leading role.

He condemns the shallowness

and pure sensual pleasures of the West,

attacks the colonial powers and Israel.

And demands the end of separation of politics and religion.

The transcripts of the lectures

are published in a book about the Islamic State.

I think I was one of the maybe first people to read it.

I was shocked by it.

But I, like a lot of other simple people like me

thought this would never work.

This is a medieval idea.

Iran that has had a constitutional revolution in 1905-07,

is not gonna let the clergy come

and cut off people's hands in public squares.

And it's not going to let the clergy rule,

because they know Sharia.

I was wrong,

as were a lot of other countries and forces.

In Iran,

this book about the Islamic State is not published,

but banned.

They want to prevent the radical ideas

and theological demands of the Shiite cleric from spreading.

But the censorship only increases the fascination

Khomeini's book holds for the opponents of the ruling class.

(speaking foreign language)

Those who politically opposed the Shah's regime

face imprisonment

in the Iranian Secret Service SAVAK's prison.

Where torture and executions are a daily affair.

This was one thing the students had demonstrated against

when the Shah visited Germany.

There is no getting out of the dreaded detention center,

which was built by German architects in the 1930s.

Iranian politicians who are active today,

like the current Supreme religious leader Ali Khamenei

were imprisoned there during the reign of the Shah.

Did they do bad things?

Absolutely.

Did they torture people?

Absolutely.

You can't forget that they actually did torture people.

They tortured a lot of people.

They executed a lot of people,

but the opposition was also very successful

in exaggerating the number of people who were in prison.

We used to say in the Confederation that there are

hundreds of thousands of prisoners in Iran.

The actual number was about 4,000.

Dissent or worse resistance,

had no place in the Shah's regime.

There is no open political dialogue

on the country's social and political development.

The parties from left to right are mostly silenced.

The opposition has fled abroad or is imprisoned.

The Shah's autocratic regime,

results in him losing contact with the people in his country

more and more.

(intense dramatic music)
(helicopter engine whirring)

(speaking foreign language)

For instance,

the dealers on the markets

play an important social role in Iran.

Millions of people come and shop with them every day.

The Shah however,

doesn't really take the Baazaris, the market dealers,

into consideration in his politics of westernization.

Department stores, chain stores and supermarkets

like the ones you can find in the West,

threaten their livelihood.

The Shah doesn't realize the consequences of his policies

and how many enemies he creates for himself with them.

(speaking foreign language)

Tehran in particular

with its modern high rise buildings,

becomes the symbol of this belief in progress.

But many people can't keep up with the Shah's pace.

So they turn to that institution which is familiar to them

and which gives them security in their insecurity.

It completely went after the left,

whether it was the left that was dependent

on the Soviet union

or whether it was a social democratic left.

The only people who were allowed

to build mosques, build schools, teach their own cadres,

were religious folks.

And you bring millions into the cities in shantytowns,

concentrate them, made them easy to mobilize,

and allow the clergy to be the only one who's active there.

And then people are surprised

that the revolution was won by the clergy.

The Shah has many mosques

renovated in the 1970s.

The number of Quran schools also rises immensely.

This way he wants to assure the clergy

how important Islam,

as an essential foundation of Iranian society is to him,

despite focusing his politics on the West.

With his public appearances

and his annual pilgrimages to the city of Mashhad,

which is one of the seven Holy Cities of Islam,

he hopes to keep the clergy securely on his side.

He saw religion as his last line of defense.

He saw religion as his most powerful,

stronghold within the country.

And that's where he made a massive miscalculation.

Massive strategic and ideological

and political miscalculation because

what he thought of

as his most powerful stronghold and backing,

turned out to be his most fatal and dangerous enemy.

The first protest marches against the Shah,

take place in Qom in 1978.

The reason is a defamatory article against Khomeini,

which is published in a big Iranian daily newspaper.

The article accuses him and the clergy

of counter revolution.

His followers organize a demonstration of support.

It was very the fast-moving revolution.

Maybe it is the fastest revolution in human history,

because everything happened within four months.

With every passing day,

the resolve of the Shah's regime

to stay in power was weakening

and the resolve of the opposition

to demand his removal was increasing.

There were fatalities during this demonstration in Qom.

According to Islamic custom,

the dead are commemorated every 40 days.

Soon, hundreds of thousands take to the streets.

Each time there are more of them.

The Shah wasn't anticipating this kind of resistance.

It catches him and his regime completely off guard.

The growing power of the streets paralyzes him.

On August the 19th, 1978,

an arson attack on Cinema Rex in the oil city of Abadan

kills 422 people.

The opposition blames

the Iranian Secret Service and the Shah.

Later on,

there's a growing body of evidence

for the clergy being behind the attack,

with Khomeini as the mastermind in the background.

After Cinema Rex, it was a different story.

Both in magnitude and the anger and in the slogans.

For the first time I heard

thousands of people say,

"Death to the Shah."

That would have been unimaginable in 77.

The protest of the masses

turns into open violence.

Tehran is ablaze.

The military intervenes.

On the 8th of September in 1978,

a day which will go down in Iranian history as Black Friday,

64 people are killed on the Central Jaleh Square.

The opposition claims there were 15,000 deaths.

A general strike ensues paralyzing the country.

(speaking foreign language)

At the behest of the Shah,

the government declares Khomeini a persona non grata.

He's forced to leave his exile in Najaf.

His confidants advise him to leave for Europe

which he declines at first.

What is he to do in a Non-Islamic country?

He is wrong.

When he goes to Neauphle-le-Château,

a little suburb of Paris,

thousands of his followers

from all over the world flock there.

Western politicians and intellectuals like

John Paul Sadler, Michel Foucault,

and (indistinct) also support Khomeini.

In France, he suddenly finds himself

the center of the global public.

He was suddenly catapulted into an international celebrity

and was much more clever

than the Shah, the British, the Iranian opposition

gave him credit for.

Because initially the idea was that,

they would send him to Neauphle-le-Château

and he would become an embarrassment.

He would say reactionary things and would frighten people.

Well he didn't say the reactionary things.

He was very careful.

He never once in a hundred and I think 10 interviews

never once mentioned the word (speaking foreign language).

(speaking foreign language)

Khomeini mentions none of the radical ideas

he expressed in his book on the Islamic State.

Since his writings are banned in Iran

and unknown in the West,

no one can confront him with them.

His speeches against the Shah

are recorded and distributed in Iran.

(speaking foreign language)

The generals in Iran are waiting for the Shah

to give them the order to crack down on the insurgence.

But he is weakened by cancer

and doesn't signal anything of that sort.

The military is perplexed and backs off.

When the soldiers stopped shooting at the people,

the people put flowers in their guns

and gave them pictures of Khomeini

they celebrate their new leader.

In a televised appeal to the Iranian people

the Shah wants to change tack one more time.

(speaking foreign language)

He looked weak.

He looked absolutely despondent.

He couldn't read the text.

And the point that he was saying is that,

"I have heard."

That's the famous phrase.

"I have heard the call of your revolution

and give me another chance."

And people saw it rightly as a sign of his weakness.

If ever there was a sign

that he is not going to be able to master the situation,

that was to me the speech.

The crisis in Iran also

causes ripples at international level.

French President of State Giscard d'Estaing,

invites the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt,

US President Carter and British Prime Minister Callaghan,

to Guadeloupe for a conference.

Here they decide on the fate of Iran.

(speaking foreign language)

This means that

the Western powers drop the Shah and his regime.

On the 16th of January, 1979.

The Shah and his family leave Iran.

The Shah expects the crisis to be over soon

so that he can return.

It turns out to be a farewell for good.

(speaking foreign language)

The Shah was a good King for the time of peace.

He wasn't a good King for the time of big trouble.

He was really a double personality.

When he felt strong, he was extremely self-assured.

And the first signs of weakness made him very, very timid.

There was no other figure.

Mr. Khomeini became the point of union.

14 days later on the 1st of February, 1979,

Khomeini flies from Paris to Tehran.

No one knows how this journey will end.

Will the Shah's military,

force the plane to turn back or even shoot it down

to prevent Khomeini from returning?

(speaking foreign language)

After 14 years of exile,

Khomeini now steps onto Iranian soil again.

Millions of people frenetically celebrate his return.

After 2,500 years,

the Persian Monarchy has outlived its usefulness.

Khomeini is received as the new savior.

No one has any idea of the consequences

which the Islamic revolution will have

for the Iranian State.

(crowd cheering)

Literally all intellectuals supported Khomeini,

from right to left.

Including those who had supported the Shah.

All our big business, you know, our big tycoons, you know

our billionaires, they all supported him.

So he had created a degree of unity

among all these different factions in Tehran,

which was impressive.

Khomeini's first visit

to the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery on the outskirts of Tehran,

where the victims of the Shah regime are buried

and to the Holy City of Qom

where his resistance began many years before.

The confrontation between these two

could be summarized to the confrontation

of two opposing will's.

And in such a confrontation,

it is always the stronger will that will win, you know.

And that's what exactly what happened in Iran.

Khomeini's will was far stronger

to conquer power

than the Shah's will to keep power.

After an Odyssey through several countries,

the Shah dies of terminal cancer in Cairo,

on the 27th of July, 1980.

He lived to be 60 years of age.

His body is buried in the Al-Rifai Mosque

in the Egyptian capital.

Ayatollah Khomeini dies of a heart attack

on the 3rd of June, 1989 in Tehran.

His resting place is a mausoleum.

During his 10 year reign,

he implemented his ideas of an Islamic revolution

with uncompromising vigor

and turned Iran into a theocracy.

Thus setting the dynamic in motion,

which even today keeps the world in suspense.

(sombre music)