The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was effectively deposed on 11 February 1979, when the revolutionary forces toppled his last government and ended the monarchy in Iran.

Although he left Iran earlier, on 16 January 1979, that departure was officially framed as a temporary absence for medical reasons, and his government under Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar continued for several weeks. The decisive fall of his regime came on 11 February 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters dismantled the remaining royal institutions and the Pahlavi dynasty’s rule formally collapsed.