The Shah did not consider the rising public opposition to his government as serious and any opposition to his regime was seen as opposition to his “land reform” program.
Imam Khomeini was directing the opposition to the Shah’s economic and political program. He had begun to preach against the Shah in Feizieh Seminary in Qom. The Seminary was attacked by the Shah’s agents and the Late Imam Khomeini was arrested. Released after a short detention, he resumed his denunciation of the government and its policies and lambasted the United Stated for supporting the Shah’s repressive policies.
Imam was arrested again on 4 June, 1963, a day after he had condemned the Shah’s acts which were in contradiction with the Constitution. When news of Imam’s arrest was publicly announced, people took to the streets in Tehran only to be suppressed with an iron fist, the next day.
It was Imam Khomeini’s public denunciation of a bill devised by Iran and the United Stated known as the “Capitulation Bill” that led to his exile to Turkey in October 1964. This bill exempted US military personnel from the jurisdiction of Iranian courts. The bill was seen to grant extra territorial privileges that were considered as distastefully reminiscent of the colonial past.
The 1963 uprising was in fact a rehearsal for the complementary uprising a decade and a half later that led to the overthrow of the Shah’s regime in 1979.