Abdurrahim Abazari in an article, citing a famous declaring by Imam wrote Imam had to face opposition even from the so-called pious people during those early years.
Imam in his famous declaration which was issued about 35 years ago explained that whenever the Pahlavi regime was termed as a traitor; revolutionaries would immediately have to hear the answer that the king is a Shia!
According to Imam, another group of such rigid figures but known as pious considered everything forbidden and no one had the power to stand up against them. Those figures considered establishment of any system before the emergence of infallible Imam as mistaken.
Therefore, not each person did believe in the uprising, but would leave the square under the pressure and threats of these so-called holy men. These types of pious men used to bring argument that "the king is the shadow of God".
While yet some other so-called holy figures used to say that "we cannot stand against cannons and tanks with flesh and skin" and that "we are not obligated to fight " or "who will answer for the blood of the victims".
Imam Khomeini first became politically active in 1962. When the White Revolution proclaimed by the Shah's government in Iran called for land reform, nationalization of the forests, the sale of state-owned enterprises to private interests, electoral changes to enfranchise women, profit sharing in industry, and an anti-illiteracy campaign in the nation's schools. Most of these initiatives were regarded as dangerous, Westernizing trends by traditionalists, especially the powerful and privileged religious scholars (Ulama) who felt keenly threatened.
In January 1963, the Shah announced a six-point program of reform called the White Revolution, an American-inspired package of measures designed to give his regime a liberal and progressive facade.
Imam Khomeini issued on January 22, 1963 a strongly worded declaration denouncing the Shah and his plans. Two days later Shah took armored column to Qom, and he delivered a speech harshly attacking the ''ulama'' as a class. Imam Khomeini continued his denunciation of the Shah's programs, issuing a manifesto that also bore the signatures of eight other senior scholars.
In it, he listed the various ways in which the Shah allegedly had violated the Constitution, condemned the spread of moral corruption in the country, and accused the Shah of comprehensive submission to America and Israel.
He also decreed that the Nowruz celebrations for the Iranian year 1342 (March 21, 1963) be cancelled as a sign of protest against government policies. In the afternoon of Ashura (June 3, 1963), Imam Khomeini delivered a speech at the Feiziyeh Madreseh seminary in which he drew parallels between Yazid and the Shah and warned the Shah that if he did not change his ways, the day would come when the people would offer up thanks for his departure from the country.
Following Imam Khomeini's public denunciation of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a "wretched miserable man" and his arrest, on June 5, 1963 (Khordad 15, on the Iranian calendar), three days of major riots erupted throughout Iran with nearly 400 killed. Imam Khomeini was kept under house arrest for 8 months and was released in 1964
During November of 1964, Imam Khomeini made a denunciation of both the Shah and the United States, this time in response to the "capitulations" or diplomatic immunity granted to American military personnel in Iran by the Shah. In Nov. 1964 Imam Khomeini was re-arrested and sent into exile.
Imam Khomeini spent over 14 years in exile, mostly in the holy city of Najaf in Iraq. Initially, he was sent to Turkey on 4 November 1964, where he stayed in the city of Bursa for less than a year.
Imam's landmark return to home in 1979 proved a turning point and finally led to the vitory of Islamic Revolution.