Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
40th anniversary of Islamic Revolution
IRAN started celebrating the 40th anniversary of the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution yesterday.
The revolt toppled the US-backed shah, overturned 2 500 years of monarchical rule and brought hardline Shia clerics to power.
The climactic events that year in Iran – where footage of revolutionaries in the streets gave way to black and white images of blindfolded American hostages in the US embassy hostage crisis months later – not only changed Iran’s history, but also helped shape today’s Middle East.
The anniversary starts every year on February 1 – the day Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned home from France, after 14 years in exile, to become the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Across Iran, sirens rang out from trains and boats, and church bells chimed at 9.33am yesterday – the exact time Khomeini’s chartered Air France Boeing 747 touched down 40 years ago at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport.
The 10-day anniversary festivities, known as the “Ten Days of Dawn”, end on February 11, the date Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s government collapsed after brief clashes between some units of the army and revolutionary gunmen and following nationwide protests.
As part of the celebrations, many Tehran buildings, mostly of government institutions and offices, dawned yesterday draped in the colours of Iran’s green, white and red flag, while multicoloured lights decorated the main streets.
In memory of those events, car drivers turned on their headlights and honked in celebration as helicopters dropped clusters of flowers along the route from the airport to the Beheshte-Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran where Khomeini made his first speech back home and where his tomb stands today.
Iranian state TV broadcast archive footage of Khomeini’s return and the daily mass demonstrations across Iran in support to his revolution.