The religious power of the ayatollahs was a basis for the internal conflicts in Iran in the 1970s.
Ayatollah Khomeini was the supreme religious leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, after many years of resistance to Shah Pahlavi. Ayatollah Khomeini and his clerical followers contituted only one faction within the clerical establishment prior to the revolution. After his appointment as Ayatollah, Khomeini strived to remove the Shah from power for his associations with the West.