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Khomeini returns from exile
Mehrabad Airport · Tehran, Iran · 1979-02-01
After fourteen years abroad Khomeini landed to crowds estimated in the millions; the monarchy fell ten days later.
The record
| Date | 1979-02-01 |
|---|---|
| Place | Mehrabad Airport, Tehran, Iran |
| Coordinates | 35.689, 51.314 (landmark-level precision) |
| Scope | World-historic |
| Sources | Wikipedia |
| Added | 2026-08-14 · source: editors |
Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.
Finding photographs
Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.
- Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
- The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
- Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
- National and municipal archives of Iran, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.
Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.
Footage
Newsreel and archive film of events like this often survives. Search YouTube for this event If you find good footage, send us the link and we will attach it to this page.
Time layers within the surrounding city
One place, several moments in time. This location has 8 recorded time layers between 1953 and 1980 — slide through them:
- 1953 — The 1953 coup in Tehran
- 1972 — Bombing of Kourosh Store
- 1972 — Bombing of Cinema Capri
- 1973 — Assassination of Lewis L. Hawkins
- 1979 — Khomeini returns from exile this page
- 1979 — The embassy hostage crisis
- 1979 — Iran hostage crisis
- 1980 — Iran Air Flight 291
Seeded by the editors. This entry was compiled by us from public reference works and is labelled as such, not presented as a reader’s contribution. Sources are listed on the entry. If you know more, or we have it wrong, tell us — corrections are published.
You can add to this page
This entry is a skeleton on purpose. If you were there, if your family was, or if you simply know the place: photographs (yours or ones you have the right to share), comments and corrections to the record above, and observations — what the place was like before, after, what the books get wrong. Everything is read by a person before publication and credited the way you ask.
What readers have added
Nothing yet — this place is waiting for its first memory. The form below takes a date, a story, photographs and links.
Do you know something about Mehrabad Airport, Tehran?
Old photographs, what your family remembers being on the corner, a shop that is not on any map we have. Contributions are read by a person before anything is published, and we never publish the names of living people.
Nearby in Asia
- Bombing of Cinema Capri (1972)
- The 1953 coup in Tehran (1953)Tehran
- The embassy hostage crisis (1979)Tehran
- Bombing of Kourosh Store (1972)
- Iran hostage crisis (1979)
- Iran Air Flight 291 (1980)