What the title says. What if Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, a leader of the Iranian revolution and the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, dies/ is killed in exile? It doesn't matter how (heart attack, stroke, helped by SAVAK) but he's dead by beginnings of the revolution in late 1977. What's the long-term effects of the Ayatollah's early death? Could the Shah's regime survive? Or at the very least could the Iranian revolution create a democratic state instead of a religious dictatorship?