Protests in West Berlin against the arrival of the Shah of Iran are brutally suppressed, during which Benno Ohnesorg is killed by a police officer. His death results in the founding of the terrorist group Movement 2 June.

West Berlin was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1990, the territory was claimed by the Federal Republic of Germany, despite being entirely surrounded by the German Democratic Republic. The legality of this claim was contested by the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. However, West Berlin de facto aligned itself politically with the FRG from May 1949 and was thereafter treated as a de facto city-state of that country. After 1949, it was directly or indirectly represented in the institutions of the FRG, and most of its residents were citizens of the FRG.

Shāh is a royal title meaning "king" in the Persian language. Though chiefly associated with the monarchs of Iran, it was also used to refer to the leaders of numerous Persianate societies, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Khanate of Bukhara and the Emirate of Bukhara, the Mughal Empire, the Bengal Sultanate, and various Afghan dynasties, as well as among Gurkhas. With regard to Iranian history, in particular, each ruling monarch was not seen simply as the head of the concurrent dynasty and state, but as the successor to a long line of royalty beginning with the original Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great. To this end, he was more emphatically known as the Shāhanshāh, meaning "King of Kings" since the Achaemenid dynasty. A roughly equivalent title is Pādishāh, which was most widespread during the Muslim period in the Indian subcontinent.

Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, and the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population and is the sixth-largest country in Asia. Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city, and financial center.