The leader of the Iranian revolution -- Shia cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini -- first came to political prominence in 1963 when he led opposition to the Shah and his "White Revolution", a program of reforms to break up landholdings (including those owned by religious foundations) and allow religious minorities to hold government office.

Khomeini was arrested in 1963 after declaring the Shah a "wretched miserable man" who had "embarked on the destruction of Islam in Iran."[39] Three days of major riots throughout Iran followed, with Khomeini supporters claiming 15,000 dead from police fire.[40] However, much lower estimates of 380 killed and wounded were later made.[41] Khomeini was released after eight months of house arrest and continued his agitation, condemning the regime's close cooperation with Israel and its capitulations, or extension of diplomatic immunity to American government personnel in Iran. In November 1964 Khomeini was re-arrested and sent into exile where he remained for 14 years until the revolution.
[edit] Exile period
Main article: Ideology of the Iranian Revolution

In this interim period of "disaffected calm" [42] the budding Islamic revival began to undermine the idea of Westernization as progress that was the basis of the Shah's secular regime, and to form the ideology of the 1979 revolution. Jalal Al-e-Ahmad's idea of Gharbzadegi -- that Western culture was a plague or an intoxication to be eliminated;[43] Ali Shariati's vision of Islam as the one true liberator of the Third World from oppressive colonialism, neo-colonialism, and capitalism;[44] and Morteza Motahhari's popularized retellings of the Shia faith, all spread and gained listeners, readers and supporters.[43]

Most importantly, Khomeini preached that revolt, and especially martyrdom, against injustice and tyranny was part of Shia Islam,[45] and that Muslims should reject the influence of both liberal capitalism and communism with the slogan "Neither East, nor West - Islamic Republic!"

Away from public view, Khomeini developed the ideology of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist) as government, that Muslims -- in fact everyone -- required "guardianship," in the form of rule or supervision by the leading Islamic jurist or jurists.[46] Such rule was ultimately "more necessary even than prayer and fasting" in Islam,[47] as it would protect Islam from deviation from traditional sharia law, and in so doing eliminate poverty, injustice, and the "plundering" of Muslim land by foreign non-believers.[48]

This idea of rule by Islamic jurists was spread through his book Islamic Government, mosque sermons, smuggled cassette speeches by Khomeini,[49] among Khomeini's opposition network of students (talabeh), ex-students (able clerics such as Morteza Motahhari, Mohammad Beheshti, Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Mofatteh), and traditional business leaders (bazaari) inside Iran.[49]

Clean hands and all that.

It really grates on my nerves and my ears to hear high-flown rhetoric about the example of our marvelous democracy coming out of the mouths of people who have enabled the erosion of our own rights and have looked the other way, or participated eagerly, as we renditioned and tortured people because we decided, with no judicial oversight, that they were "terrorists."  Or that we can now just detain them forever if that's what we want to do.