Podcast Episode Details

Less than three weeks later, the Ayatollah landed at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport, the city greeting him with a crowd of over three million people.  Khomeini’s political attitudes were made immediately clear.  Any appointments by the shah were invalid, the result of an illegal government.  Of Bakhtiar and others, Khomeini commented, “I will kick their teeth in, I decide on the government.”  He also stated that although he would appoint his own Prime Minister, his long term intention was to construct a republic based on Islamic fundamentalism and sharia law.  He routinely vilified the United States as, “The great Satan,” and mocked the Soviet Union as “The Lesser Satan.” 

By October of 1979, the Shah of Iran was languishing in Mexico.  After Egypt, he made stops in Morocco and the Bahamas before proceeding to Cuernavaca.  His doctors advised that treatment in the US for an obviously seriously spreading lymphoma was crucial but the Carter administration was wary of admitting the Shah, not wishing to worsen relations with the new Iranian government.