When Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979, ending his exile just as the Shah was beginning his, he came as the victor of a 16-year war between the turban and the crown. Khomeini himself had fired the war’s first shots on June 3, 1963, in an attack on the Shah for sins of every description, not least Iran’s cooperative relations with Israel. “Is the Shah an Israeli?” Khomeini asked, adding that the monarch was an “infidel Jew.” The royal response was not long in coming. Khomeini was promptly hauled off to prison, and on June 5 (the 15th of the Persian month of Khordad), following...…When Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979, ending his exile just as the Shah was beginning his, he came as the victor of a 16-year war between the turban and the crown. Khomeini himself had fired the war’s first shots on June 3, 1963, in an attack on the Shah for sins of every description, not least Iran’s cooperative relations with Israel. “Is the Shah an Israeli?” Khomeini asked, adding that the monarch was an “infidel Jew.” The royal response was not long in coming. Khomeini was promptly hauled off to prison, and on June 5 (the 15th of the Persian month of Khordad), following...WW…