Mehrabad airport in 1971. Note the four-engined Boeing 707. Mehrabad was to become one of the busiest and most modern airports in Western Asia by the late 1970s.

 In the decades before the revolution of 1979, our homeland was ruled by the Shah whose dictatorship repressed dissent and restricted political freedoms. But he also he pushed the country to adopt Western-oriented secular modernization, allowing some degree of cultural freedom.

 Under the Shah’s rule, our homeland’s economy and educational opportunities expanded.