At twenty-seven years old, Khomeini began to teach philosophy after concluding his Islamic studies. Having the Koran as the only political creed, he maintained a strong opposition toward the Pahlevi dynasty that led him to join the nationalistic movement which carried Mosaddeq to power in 1953. Nine years afterwards he would be converted into the guide of the powerful Shiite sect, to the one which the largest part of the 40 million iranians belongs .

On account of some violent demonstrations against the shah in 1963, in which copies of a text of his where he expressed his opposition to the monarchy were distributed, he was incarcerated for the first time, and deported to Turkey in 1964. The motive of those demonstrations was the opposition of the shiites to the agrarian reform that confiscated their large rural estates, as well as their negative to accept women's emancipation proposed by the emperor.

After a short exile community in Turkey, Khomeini moved to Nafaj, holy city for Iraq shiites, where he stayed fourteen years between adhesions and problems. Once dissipated the produced growth by the developist policy put in practice by the shah, the interior opposition centered again its hopes in Khomeini, especially by the bazaaris, principal prejudiced by the foreign companies proliferation that began to be installed with the protection of the "white revolution" sponsored by the monarchy.

Forced to abandon Iraq by the al-Bakr regime, Khomeini would set in Neauphle-le-Chatea in October, 1978, near Paris; from there he directed, with his wife and his minor son, the final phase of the struggle that peaked in the historical overthrow of the Pahlevi.