Khomeini: The man who overthrew Shah

Ruhollah Khomeini built a regime rooted in repression, bloodshed, and the state sponsorship of terrorism that has destabilized the Middle East and beyond for decades.

Yasser Arafat meeting with Ruhollah Khomeini, 1979 (Public Domain).

What is often left out of this story is the Palestinian role in midwifing the Islamic Republic.

During the 1970s, the Palestine Liberation Organization was a heavily militarized transnational network with training camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, deeply embedded in global terrorist circuits.

In the years leading up to 1979, Iranian Islamist militants linked to Khomeini received weapons training, guerrilla instruction, and operational know-how from PLO factions, particularly through camps in Lebanon. This included urban warfare, sabotage, and terror tactics later adopted by Iran’s revolutionary institutions.

Palestinian jihadists and PLO operatives were present on the ground during the Iranian Revolution, assisting Islamist forces during the chaotic collapse of the Shah’s security apparatus.

One of Khomeini’s first symbolic acts after seizing power was to hand the Israeli Embassy in Tehran to the PLO, transforming it into the Palestinian Embassy. This was more than symbolism. It formalized a strategic alliance that soon included arms transfers, joint training, and ideological coordination.

That early cooperation helped shape the operational playbook of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and later Hezbollah, whose founders trained alongside Palestinian factions in Lebanon. Iran’s proxy warfare was built using existing Palestinian militant infrastructure and know-how.

Despite ideological differences between the Palestinian militancy and Shiite Islamism, both movements were united by the common framework of rejection of Israel’s existence, and the normalization of terrorism as political strategy. Khomeini absorbed this framework and scaled it up, regionally and then globally.

Iran’s Islamist terror architecture was not invented in 1979. It was assembled from pre-existing militant networks, trained by others, and refined into a state doctrine, with direct Palestinian involvement long before Tehran became the region’s leading sponsor of jihadist movements.

That origin story still defines the region today.

Image credits Photo: Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1979 / Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.