Orwin 43). About this time, the middle class, which included students, technocrats, and modernist professionals, became discontent with the economy. The key event should have further stabilized the royal dictatorship, but the increase in oil prices and oil income beginning in 1974 caused extreme inflation. This was due to the investment strategy followed by the Shah, which led to a spectacular 42% growth rate in 1974. (Cottam 14). And because of the Shah's support structure which enabled the new rich to benefit from inflation, the government effort to deal with inflation was aimless. Poor Iranians and Iranians with a fixed income suffered major losses in real income. Better standards of living were no longer visible. Thus, the majority of the Iranian people developed a revolutionary predisposition. As the middle class became discontent in Iran throughout the 1970's, the desertion of intellectuals could be found in great excess. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini represented much of the discontent of the religious sector of Iran. For speaking out against the Shah's autocratic rule, Khomeini was exiled to Turkey in 1963. In 1965, Khomeini moved to Iraq where he became the central spokesperson for expatriate opposition to the Shah. On October 6, 1978, Khomeini was expelled from Iraq and moved to Paris, where he was accessible to a larger ...
