On January 25, 1980, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was elected as Iran's first president since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Though we won an overwhelming majority of the popular vote, he did not have the support of the predominantly fundamentalist parliament. On June 22, 1981, he was dismissed from the presidency by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Shortly thereafter he fled to Paris, where he had lived in exile during the reign of the Shah. |