Iran
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Country in southwest Asia, bounded north by Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan; east by Afghanistan and Pakistan; south and southwest by the Gulf of Oman and the Gulf; west by Iraq; and northwest by Turkey.
Government
The constitution, which came into effect on the overthrow of the shah in 1979, provides for a president elected by universal suffrage and a single-chamber legislature, the Majlis (Islamic Consultative Assembly), consisting of 270 members, similarly elected. The president and the assembly serve a four-year term. All legislation passed by the assembly must be sent to the Shura-E-Nigahban (Council of Guardians), consisting of six religious and six secular lawyers, to ensure that it complies with the constitution and Islamic precepts. There is also a 83-member Majlis-E-Khobregan (Council of Experts), composed entirely of clerics and elected to decide issues such as succession to the position of Wali Faqih (religious leader), who, as spiritual leader, has overall authority. The president is the executive head of government but, like the assembly, ultimately subject to the will of the religious leader. Although a number of political parties exist, Iran is fundamentally a one-party state, the Islamic Republican Party having been founded in 1978 to bring about the Islamic revolution.History
The name Iran is derived from the Aryan tribes, including the Medes and Persians, who overran Persia (see Persia, ancient) from 1600 BC. Cyrus the Great, who seized the Median throne in 550, formed an empire that included Babylonia, Syria, and Asia Minor, and to which Egypt, Thrace, and Macedonia were later added. It was conquered by Alexander the Great in 334–328, then passed to his general Seleucus (c. 358–280) and his descendants, until overrun in the 3rd century BC by the Parthians. The Parthian dynasty was overthrown in AD 226 by Ardashir, founder of the Sassanian Empire.During 633–41 Persia was conquered for Islam by the Arabs and then in 1037–55 came under the Seljuk Turks. Their empire broke up in the 12th century and was conquered in the 13th century by the Mongols. After 1334 Persia was again divided until its conquest by Tamerlane in the 1380s. A period of violent disorder in the later 15th century was ended by the accession of the Safavid dynasty, who ruled between 1499 and 1736 but were deposed by the great warrior Nadir Shah (ruled 1736–47), whose death was followed by instability until the accession of the Qajar dynasty (1794–1925).
During the 18th century Persia was threatened by Russian expansion, culminating in the loss of Georgia in 1801 and a large part of Armenia in 1828. Persian claims on Herat, Afghanistan, led to war with Britain in 1856–57. Revolutions of 1905 and 1909 resulted in the establishment of a parliamentary regime. During World War I the country was occupied by British and Russian forces. An officer, Col Reza Khan, was made minister of war following a coup of 1921, and was crowned shah in 1925; this allowed him to carry out a massive programme of modernization.
After World War II
During World War II, Iran, as it had become known, was occupied by British, US, and Soviet troops until 1946. Anti-British and anti-American feeling grew, and in 1951 the newly elected prime minister, Dr Muhammad Mossadeq, obtained legislative approval for the nationalization of Iran's largely foreign-owned petroleum industry. With US intervention, he was deposed in a 1953 coup, and the dispute over nationalization was settled the following year when oil-drilling concessions were granted to a consortium of eight companies. The shah took complete control of the government, and Iran enjoyed a period of political stability and economic growth (1965–77), based on oil revenue.Iranian revolution
By 1975 the shah had introduced a one-party system, based on the Rastakhis (Iran National Resurgence Party), but opposition to his regime was growing. The most effective opposition came from the religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who campaigned from exile in France, demanding a return to the principles of Islam. Pressure on the shah became so great that in 1979 he left the country, leaving the way open for Khomeini to return as head of a 15-member Islamic Revolutionary Council.Islamic republic
Iran was declared an Islamic republic, and a new constitution, based on Islamic principles, was adopted. Relations with the USA were badly affected when a group of Iranian students took 63 Americans hostage at the US embassy in Tehran, demanding that the shah return to face trial. Even the death of the shah, in Egypt in 1980, did little to resolve the crisis, which finally ended when all the hostages were released in January 1981.Iran–Iraq War
In its early years several rifts developed within the new Islamic government and although by 1982 some stability had been attained, disputes developed between different factions in the years that followed. Externally, the war with Iraq, which broke out in 1980 after a border dispute, continued with considerable loss of life on both sides. Islamic law was becoming stricter, with amputation as the penalty for theft and flogging for minor sexual offences. By 1985 the failure to end the Iran–Iraq War and the harshness of the Islamic codes were increasing opposition to Khomeini's regime. By 1987 both sides in the war had increased the scale of their operations, each apparently believing that outright victory was possible. In August 1988, under heavy domestic and international pressure, Iran accepted the provisions for a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire. Full diplomatic relations with the UK were restored in December 1988, but the issuing of a death threat to the author Salman Rushdie caused a severance in March 1989.Rebuilding the economy
Khomeini's death in June 1989 provoked a power struggle between hardline revolutionaries and so-called pragmatists who recognized a need for trade and cooperation with the West. Revelations in 1989 that Iran had negotiated secret oil sales to Israel reflected Iran's need for hard currency to rebuild its economy as well as its desire to counter Iraq. The struggle for succession ended with the confirmation of the former speaker of the Majlis, Hashemi Rafsanjani, as president with increased powers; Ayatollah Ali Khameini became interim religious leader. Despite Rafsanjani's reputation for moderation and pragmatism, Iran's relations with the West were slow to improve. In August 1990 Iran accepted Iraq's generous peace terms, which virtually gave back everything it had claimed at the start of the Iran–Iraq War. During the Kurdish refugee crisis that followed the Gulf War, Iran took in nearly 1 million Kurds, accusing the USA and relief agencies of their neglect. Iran also condemned the Middle East peace conference held in Spain in 1991.In the 1992 legislative elections, supporters of Rafsanjani claimed a majority win, constituting a major setback for Iran's Islamic militants. Rafsanjani was himself re-elected in 1993, but with a reduced majority. His attempts to promote free-market reforms to stimulate an ailing economy were repeatedly thwarted by the opposition of clerics. However, Rafsanjani supporters secured a clear victory over hardline conservatives in the March 1996 assembly elections.
In March 1997 two earthquakes hit northeast Iran within two days. As rescue workers searched the mountainous region to assess the damage, 965 people were reported dead and more than 2,600 injured.
Terrorism
For the first time in a Western judicial system, Iran's leaders were held directly responsible for international terrorism in April 1997 when a German court ruled that they had ordered the murders of three Iranian Kurdish opposition activists in Berlin. The judgement plunged German and EU relations with Iran into crisis. German and Iranian ambassadors were recalled from each other's countries, and the EU issued a statement inviting members to withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran. The court said that a ‘Committee for Special Operations’ in Tehran had approved the September 1992 killings at a Greek restaurant in Berlin, and declared that the committee's members included Iran's president and paramount spiritual leader.Khatami as president
Muhammad Khatami, a moderate cleric, succeeded Rafsanjani as president in May 1997 and was confirmed in office in August of the same year. He declared that Iran wanted peaceful coexistence with the rest of the world. Khatami's victory was seen as a mandate to ease Islamic strictures imposed after the 1979 Islamic revolution, and to forge ahead with reforms to combat inflation and unemployment. In January 1998 Khatami publicly called for improved relations with the USA and in March more conciliatory speeches prompted talk of rapprochement by Western countries and the EU. A new reform party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, was founded in December 1998 to stand behind President Khatami's supporters in the February 1999 municipal elections. However, in late 1999 intelligence agents arrested members of a group that was plotting to assassinate the president.Iran's intelligence ministry admitted in early January 1999 that its agents had been directly implicated in the recent murders of political and intellectual dissidents. It was expected that such unprecedented honesty would boost President Khatami's fight for a more open society.
The government announced in April 1999 that diplomatic relations with the UK were to be restored. Khatami in May 1999 paid a ground-breaking visit to Saudi Arabia, ending the longest hostility between Iran and its Arab Gulf neighbours. Iran and the UK exchanged ambassadors for the first time in 20 years. In October 1999, President Khatami visited France, as part of the new strategy of Iranian-European détente. A further conciliatory step was taken in December 1999 when Iran announced that it would no longer work with China on nuclear projects, a policy which was long sought for by the USA.
2000 parliamentary elections
Many prominent reformers were prevented from standing in the February 2000 parliamentary elections by the Council of Guardians. However, supporters of President Khatami and their reformist allies won a convincing majority, while former president, Rafsanjani, failed to win a seat, although he was elected to the assembly. Following the pro-reformist election, it was disclosed that Rafsanjani was allegedly linked to government officials who had committed human rights abuses and executions of dissidents, intellectuals, and criminals during his presidency. The election of a reformist government appeared to precipitate the easing of US sanctions which had been imposed on Iran afer the Islamic revolution in 1979. Absent, though, from the proposed list of permitted products were oil and gas, Iran's most important exports, which generate revenue for military programmes. In addition to easing sanctions in March 2000, US secretary of state Madeleine Albright acknowledged that the USA had made errors in dealing with Iran in the past. She said that the USA was ready to negotiate a settlement for Iran's outstanding legal claims, including the return of Iranian assets which have been frozen since 1979. Ali Akbar Mohtashami, a former radical, was elected in August 2000 to lead the reforming majority in Iran's parliament, defeating Muhammad Reza Khatami, the president's brother, who had led the party's election campaign.Opposition to reform
President Khatami's campaign to liberalize Iran suffered hardline opposition to change in April 2000 when 13 pro-democracy newspapers at the forefront of Khatami's campaign were closed down by the Council of Guardians. Two journalists were arrested, and 12 election wins for Khatami's allies were annulled. Thousands of students across Iran demanded an end to the forced closure of most of the country's free press, and supported the reforms which had been made by President Khatami. However, after the student demonstrations, a court closed the last two significant reformist newspapers, including one owned by Khatami's brother. In October the reformist minister for culture resigned in the face of strong conservative opposition to his policies.On 13 January 2001, the judiciary gave heavy prison sentences to eight of Khatami's prominent supporters, sentencing them for between three and ten years on charges relating to crimes of expression and thought. The following month President Khatami warned that extremist Islamic law was a threat to democracy after a court convicted 15 secret-service agents of the murder of four dissidents in 1998, and sentenced three to death. His remarks provoked clashes in Tehran between security forces and sympathetic students. In March, the judiciary banned the country's main opposition group and closed down four pro-reform newspapers. In April, 42 opposition leaders were arrested on charges of trying to overthrow the Islamic establishment. However, in May an appeals court overturned the sentence of the journalist Akbar Ganji, convicted in January for undermining national security after naming a former intelligence minister as being behind the murder of dissident intellectuals. Days later, and during Iran's presidential election campaign, a ‘confession’ by Ali Afshari, a student and supporter of President Khatami who had been jailed in January, was televised. He confessed he had participated in a campaign to overthrow the regime.
WTO application rejected
In May, the USA blocked Iran from joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, in September Iran held its highest-level meeting with the European Union (EU) since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The EU pressed for new economic ties in defiance of US insistence on sanctions against companies investing there.Khatami re-elected
President Khatami celebrated his landslide election victory in June 2001 by sharing a platform with the figurehead of the conservative establishment, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, hours after their supporters had clashed on the streets of the Tehran. Khatami won 21.7 million of the 28.2 million votes cast, while his nearest rival, Ahmad Tavakoli, won only 4.4 million. In August, Khatami was sworn in for his second four-year term several days late, after an unsuccessful attempt by his reformist parliament to challenge the powerful Shura-E-Nigahban, a body that had repeatedly blocked pro-reform laws during his first term.In the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the USA, Britain and the EU attempted to solicit support from Iran for military action in Afghanistan. Despite the government's enmity towards Osama bin Laden's al-Quaeda network, Ayatollah Khameini refused to offer backing to the campaign.
In February 2002, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Iran of giving refuge to senior al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders fleeing allied action in Afghanistan. His comments followed US president George W Bush's assertion that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea together formed an ‘axis of evil’ that threatened peace in the West. Tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran on 11 February in the largest anti-US protests in the country since 1997. President Khatami, usually an exponent of closer relations with the West, made one of the most hardline and anti-US speeches of his political career.
In December 2003, an earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale devasted the southeastern town of Bam, killing around 41,000 people.
New president
In the elections of June 2005, the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former major of Tehran, became Iran's first president for 24 years who was not a cleric.How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content.
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