With the onset of revolution in 1978, Pezeshkpour and other politicians who had been allied with the Shah fled the country into exile. Mohammad Reza Ameli Tehrani, a co-founder of the party, was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court, and subsequently executed in May 1979. Nationalist movements such as Mellat Iran and the National Front, which had been opposed to the Shah, remained in the country and played a crucial role in the revolutionary provisional government of Mehdi Bazargan. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which eventually saw the rise to power of Khomeini to the position of Supreme Leader after the collapse of the provisional government, all nationalist groups, as well as socialist and communist movements such as the Tudeh Party, were banned.