In 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. 

Reacting to the bill, Imam made a historic speech which was opened with the following sentences: “....Our honor has been trampled on, Iran’s grandeur is smeared. They took a law bill to the Majlis whereby we were joined up to the Vienna Pact....appointing all American military advisors and their families, their technical and administrative employees, and servants...are exempt from trial for any crime they commit in Iran... Gentlemen! I am warning. O Army of Iran, I declare danger. O Iranian politicians, I declare danger! By God, he who does not cry out, sins; he who does not cry out, commits cardinal sin. O heads of Islam save Islam! O Ulema of Najaf, O Ulema of Qom, save Islam!!”

Imam Khomeini had also earlier opposed 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 and relgious scholars.

The Ulama instigated anti-government riots throughout the country. They found the White Revolution a sustainable ideological framework to support a particular relation of domination, in this case the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

 This was above all a hegemonic project intended to portray the Shah as a revolutionary leader through the utilization of social and historical myths reinterpreted through the prism of contemporary, often conflicting ideological constructs, such as nationalism and modernism.

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 summoned a meeting of his colleagues (other Ayatollahs) in Qom to press upon them the necessity of opposing the Shah's plans.

 Imam Khomeini persuaded the other senior Marjas of Qom to decree a boycott of the referendum that the Shah had planned to obtain the appearance of popular approval for his White Revolution. 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. 

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. 

Months later,  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. 

Reza Shah transformed the Iranian monarchy into a modern dictatorship. The modernizing programs of Pahlavi dynasty restricted and threatened religious life and made clergies be against monarchy and finally Imam Khomeini decide to fight with them and build another state comparable to religious rules.

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Imam Khomeini voiced his strong opposition to ‘Bill of Capitulation’

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