Between January 1978 and February 11, 1979, the Muslim revolutionary people of Iran, under the wise leadership of Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini, the Founder of the Islamic Revolution, voiced their opposition against the secular and US-backed rule of Mohamad Reza Shah.

The regime of Mohammad Reza Shah had caused much suffering and economic gap and inequality in Iranian society and its Secret Police (SAVAK) had tortured Iranian youth brutally, therefore, widespread dissatisfaction among the lower classes, Shia clergy, bazaar merchants, and students led in 1978 to the growth of support for Imam Khomeini who was living in exile in Paris.

The dictator of Iran and his family fled Iran on January 16, 1979, and Imam Khomeini returned home after a 15-year- exile, and the nationwide demonstrations ended up with the Victory of the Islamic Revolution on February 11, 1979.

The impressive notions and ideologies of the Islamic Revolution became a role model for all independent Muslim countries and freedom-seeking nations.

Today, after 45 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran, under the leadership of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei is at the forefront of the fight against global arrogance and oppressive powers like the United States and the Zionist Regime.

Following is the text of an interview with American author and journalist Mark Glenn regarding the effect of the Islamic Revolution on international equations.

What was the role of Imam Khomeini in the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran?

Like shepherds who lead and protect their flocks, every revolution, whether the ‘revolution’ is philosophical in nature or political, has its leader.

Jesus Christ was a revolutionary and likewise Mohammed. For Americans, it was George Washington. And for Iran, it was Imam Rouhallah Khomeini.

That he achieved something unprecedented in the history of not only modern Iran but indeed, the modern Islamic world, is more of an exclamation point than it is a question mark.

Today, given the globally-important events taking place at this very moment, from Gaza to southern Lebanon to Yemen, all of these places–and more to come, assuredly–shudder and quake with the aftershocks of history as a result of what he did in 1979.

After the dust has settled and people are once again free to think rational thoughts as our creator intended, Khomeini will be remembered for the role he played in shifting the course of human activity on a global level, and the 1979 Revolution will be remembered for the role it played in helping to defeat Satan’s proposed kingdom on earth.

What were the impacts of the victory of the Islamic Revolution on world equations especially on challenging the then theory of dependence on the West or East?

That the entire world, and especially the Islamic world, lives, breathes and dies based upon what decisions are made in the United States underscores the tragedy of the times in which we are living.

The unholy, godless carnage taking place right now in Gaza is but one demonstration of this tragedy, where not only is the world’s lone superpower apparently unable to stop it, but even worse, is providing the crocodile known as the Jewish state with everything she needs in continuing this massacre of innocents that cries out to heaven for justice.

Out of all the nations of the world, there is only one that stands steadfastly against this and has since 1979, and it is this—the ability on the part of both the individual human being and on the part of entire nations to act independently and morally, as the Creator intended, that is proof positive of the fruit of Iran’s 1979 revolution.

Every other state in the world, and especially in the Middle East, dare not say too much nor go too far in opposing the carnage that is taking place for fear of America’s retributive wrath. The penalty for doing so is loss of economic stability, coups, and color revolutions, or, as everyone witnessed with the destructions of Iraq and Libya, military invasion.

What were the impacts of the 1979 Islamic Revolution on the Islamic World especially on the Palestine issue and the resistance of Palestinian people against Zionist occupiers?

As I previously stated, there is no underestimating/undervaluing the importance that the revolution of 1979 produced, not just in Iran, but throughout the world, and especially the Islamic world. 

Were it not for Iran and the principled role she has played in speaking up for the rights of the oppressed Palestinians and in supporting honorable armed resistance to this oppression, then the illusion would exist of a powerless world and an indomitable system of evil, as obviously exists today with the West–principally America–and Israel, Satan’s headquarters on earth. 

What are Imam Khomeini’s political Islam potentials to become a role model for the world of Islam?

That Iran’s moral strength functions as a counterforce to the hydra of evil (made up by the US and Israel) is neither a mere theory nor an item of small importance.

The entire ‘nuclear program’ that Netanyahu and other minions of Satan have utilized in setting the stage for their plans of Iran’s destruction has nothing to do with WMDs, but rather with Iran’s potential of rallying all the nations in the Middle East region around her like subatomic particles orbiting an atom’s nucleus.

THIS is the real ‘nuclear program’ that has Israel and America worried—Islamic solidarity and unity, and with Iran and her 1979 revolution as the binding force holding all of it together.

Interview by Marzieh Rahmani