During the reign of the Pahlavi dynasty, Zoroastrians changed from being one of the most persecuted minorities in Iran to a symbol of Iranian nationalism. This notion carried on all the way through the 1979 Islamic Revolution when Ayatollah Sadughi proclaimed that "We Muslims are like the branches of a tree, if our roots are cut off, we shall shrivel up and die", also the last prime minister before the revolution Shapour Bakhtiar held an anti-Ayatollah Khomeini meeting in Los Angeles, California on the day of the Zoroastrian Mehregan festival (1980), in tribute to "true nationalism" "(see Iranian nationalism)".