Cinema Rex fire

The Cinema Rex fire (Persian: آتش‌سوزی سینما رکس آبادان, lit. 'Rex Abadan cinema fire') occurred on 19 August 1978 when the Cinema Rex in Abadan, Iran, was set ablaze, killing between 377 and 470 people. The event started when four individuals, who were militants motivated by Islamic extremism, doused the building with airplane fuel before setting it alight. The attack was responsible in part for triggering the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which saw the overthrow of the ruling dynasty under the Iranian monarch and a related outbreak of mass violence.

The governing dynasty initially blamed "Islamic Marxists" for the fire and later reported that Islamic militants started the fire, while anti-Pahlavi protesters falsely blamed SAVAK, the Iranian secret police, for setting the fire. Even though Islamic extremists were responsible for the attack, the Islamic opposition benefited greatly from the disaster in terms of propaganda because of the general atmosphere of mistrust and wrath. Many Iranians accepted the disinformation, which fueled growing anti-Shah fervor.

According to Roy Mottahedeh, an American historian who authored The Mantle of the Prophet, "thousands of Iranians who had felt neutral and had until now thought that the struggle was only between the shah and supporters of religiously conservative mullahs felt that the government might put their own lives on the block to save itself. Suddenly, for hundreds of thousands, the movement was their own business."