ABSTRACT
During Mohammad Reza Shah’s reign (r. 1941-1979), Iran experienced increasing tension between secular and religious social segments. The oil industry, which had been developing since the 1910s, had helped modernize Iranian society-a trend that, however, was opposed by many Iranian Shiites. From the 1950s through the end of the 1970s, the shah resorted to increasingly brutal methods to maintain his power. In 1979, a popular revolution sent the shah into exile and paved the way for the return of an exiled Islamic cleric, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who in 1979 founded a fundamentalist Shiite Islamic republic. Seizure of the U.S. Embassy and diplomatic personnel by a group of radical protesters in 1979 led
to an international crisis. Between 1980 and 1988, Iran and Iraq fought a bloody war that resulted in 1 million Iranian casualties.
