On 1 February 1979 , just after 9 . 30a.m., an Air France 747airliner landed at Mehrabad airport on the western outskirts of Tehran, and a member of the crew, with others in attendance, helped an elderly, bearded man down the steps to the ground. This was no ordinary flight. As the aircraft had entered Iranian airspace, many on board had feared it might be shot down. As it landed, several million Iranians were waiting on the streets to welcome the bearded man in clerical robes, and every move he made was shadowed by crowds of minders, reporters, photographers and hangerson of all kinds. The special passenger for whom the aircraft had been chartered was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, returning from exile, and the photographs and film of his descent from the aircraft became some of the defining images of the Iranian revolution. Khomeini had been away from the country since the autumn of 1964 ; initially in Turkey and Iraq, later (briefly) in Paris. The Shah, whose government had exiled Khomeini, had left Iran from the same airport fourteen days before, on 16January, after a year- long crescendo of mass protest against his rule. Newspapers that had carried the headline ‘Shah raft’ (‘The Shah Is Gone’) now printed ‘Emam amad’ (‘The Emam Has Come’). Many people had waited up all night to witness Khomeini’s arrival. The crowds cried ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and ‘Khomeini, O Emam!’ In the airport building he made a short speech thanking the students, clergy and bazaar merchants for their sacrifi ces in the demonstrations over the previous year and exhorted them to remain united to defeat the remnants of the Shah’s regime. At one point the hubbub was such that he had to be carried outside. There was some tension between the clerics welcoming Khomeini and those who had accompanied him from Paris.
Imam Khomeini and a New Paradigm for Interaction of Power and People
