Iran

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Introduction; Land and Resources; People and Society; Arts; Economy; Government; History

Islamic Republic

In February 1979 Khomeini asked Mehdi Bazargan to form a provisional government. By spring the national solidarity that had been so crucial to the ultimate success of the revolution had begun to erode as various political groups competed for power and influence. The secular parties had no leader of comparable stature to Khomeini and soon were marginalized. Of the many religious groups, the most influential was the Islamic Republican Party (IRP), formed by former students of Khomeini. Its principal opponents were two nonclerical religious parties, the moderate Liberation Movement of Iran, to which Bazargan belonged, and the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MK), which espoused radical programs for the redistribution of wealth and tended to be anticlerical.

Bazargan resigned in November 1979 in protest over the hostage crisis (for more information, see the Hostage Crisis and the Iran-Iraq War section of this article). In December voters approved a new constitution. Khomeini, as faqih, or supreme spiritual leader, held the highest authority in the country. In January 1980 voters elected Abolhassan Bani-Sadr as the first president of the republic. Following parliamentary elections in March, the Majlis and Bani-Sadr could not agree on a presidential nominee for prime minister. In August Bani-Sadr reluctantly accepted the IRP candidate, Mohammad Ali Rajai, as prime minister. The president and prime minister clashed often, and in June 1981 the Majlis dismissed Bani-Sadr. Rajai subsequently was elected president and chose IRP head Mohammad-Javad Bahonar as his prime minister.

In June 1981 the MK, which had clashed frequently with the IRP throughout 1980, launched an armed uprising against the IRP-dominated government. The MK succeeded in killing more than 70 top IRP leaders by bombing the party headquarters in late June. Two months later the MK assassinated both Rajai and Bahonar. By mid-1982 the government had suppressed the party through severe measures that included mass arrests and summary executions of more than 7,000 suspected MK members. In 1983 the government dissolved the communist Tudeh Party, leaving the Liberation Movement of Iran as the only officially recognized party in opposition to the IRP. As internal political stability returned, distinct ideological factions emerged within the IRP. These internal rifts eventually would cause the IRP to dissolve itself in 1987. Meanwhile, elections in October 1981 brought Seyed Ali Khamenei, one of the founders of the IRP and a member of the Majlis, to power as president.

The Hostage Crisis and the Iran-Iraq War

Foreign relations played at least as large a role as internal politics in shaping the new republic. The movement against the shah had also been a movement against U.S. involvement in Iran. From the outset the provisional government announced that Iran would no longer serve American interests in the Persian Gulf and would discontinue all military agreements with the United States. However, Khomeini and most government ministers feared that the United States would intervene again, as it had in 1953, to restore the shah to power. After the shah was allowed entry into the United States in October 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehrān and took 66 Americans hostage. The United States responded by freezing Iranian assets held by U.S. banks and imposing trade sanctions against Iran. Thirteen hostages were soon released, but the students announced that the remaining 53 would be released only when the United States apologized for its support of the shah and sent him back to Iran to stand trial for his crimes. They also demanded the return of billions of dollars they believed the shah had hoarded abroad. When Khomeini endorsed the students' actions, the hostage crisis ensued. After nearly 15 months, a settlement mediated by Algeria enabled the hostages to return to the United States, which agreed to participate in a tribunal based in The Hague, The Netherlands, to settle claims of U.S. citizens and companies against Iran. The crisis resulted in a complete severing of the once close relationship between the Iranian and U.S. governments and a deep mutual suspicion of each other's international behavior.

Economic and Political Developments

After the end of hostilities with Iraq, the government of Iran implemented a series of five-year plans to promote economic reconstruction and growth. Under these plans, the government has rebuilt the war-devastated regions in the west and improved or built infrastructure projects such as dams, electric power plants, hospitals, highways, port facilities, railroads, and schools. Since 1989 there has been intense political controversy over the government's role in economic development. In general, politicians who favor a strong government role in national economic planning have controlled the executive branch. The Majlis often has opposed such government policies, either out of a conviction that the plans ignored the lower classes or out of a desire to promote the interests of private business.

The death of Khomeini in 1989 may have contributed to the competition among the political elite. During the initial ten years of the Islamic republic, Khomeini did not involve himself in routine governmental affairs but rather served as an arbiter who suggested compromises when the executive and legislative branches could not agree. Because of his charisma and authority as leader of the revolution, politicians always deferred to his suggestions. In the absence of a political figure of comparable stature, political debates became more protracted, and compromises were more difficult to achieve.

The Assembly of Experts chose Khamenei, who would complete his second term as president that year, to succeed Khomeini as faqih. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who had been speaker of the Majlis from 1980 to 1989, won the 1989 presidential election and was reelected in 1993. As president, Rafsanjani supported the “alternative thought” movement, which advocated official tolerance of more diverse cultural and political views, especially in the press. Mohammed Khatami, who served as minister of Islamic guidance and culture under both Khamenei and Rafsanjani beginning in 1982, crafted this policy. In 1992, after a more conservative Majlis was elected, Khatami resigned, but he continued to serve as cultural adviser to President Rafsanjani. Khatami's opposition to censorship and arbitrary government had wide popular appeal that helped him win almost 70 percent of the vote in the 1997 presidential election. As president, Khatami continued to advocate political reform and freedom of the press as essential for the creation of a civil society. Khatami’s liberal policies met with opposition from conservatives who distrusted popular government. The intense political competition between liberals and conservatives was reflected in the press and in street demonstrations. In 1998 two liberal politicians and three liberal writers were killed in separate incidents that the Khatami government blamed on conservatives in the Ministry of Information.

In February 2000 Iranian voters favored pro-reform candidates in elections to the Majlis. The elections appeared to provide a popular mandate for Khatami’s reform efforts. Accordingly, Khatami was reelected president in June 2001 by an overwhelming margin. The conservative elements of the government responded by blocking Khatami’s inauguration until the Majlis approved two conservative nominees to the Council of Guardians.

A pro-Khatami reform coalition formed a majority in the Majlis, but this coalition consisted of 18 separate political parties that could not agree on a wide range of cultural and economic policies. Thus, during its four-year tenure, the reform coalition failed to enact legislation demanded by a majority of Iranians. In addition, all the parties in the reform coalition shared a deep distrust of the people and failed to broaden their essentially elitist parties into genuine mass political organizations. Iranians demonstrated their disillusionment with the reform coalition during local council elections held in the winter of 2003. Less than 15 percent of those eligible voted in Tehrān, and nationwide, only 30 percent of the electorate bothered to vote. Candidates backed by the reform parties were defeated all over the country.

Subsequently, in January 2004 the Council of Guardians disqualified 2,600 out of 8,150 candidates who had registered to run for the 290 seats in the Majlis in the February elections. The reform coalition in the Majlis, including 87 incumbents who had been disqualified, attracted international media attention by characterizing the disqualifications as a setback for democracy.

Under pressure from Khatami and the reformers, Khamenei tried to intervene by advising the Council of Guardians that its procedures for reviewing candidates might be flawed if more than 40 percent of the candidates were being disqualified. The Council of Guardians eventually reinstated about 1,150 candidates, but none of the major reform politicians who had been disqualified were reinstated.

Despite the disqualifications and calls for a boycott by several reform parties, at least one reform candidate, and in many constituencies several, contested each of the 290 seats. Most reformers obtained less than 10 percent of the vote, however. Consequently, a majority of the newly elected Majlis deputies were affiliated with one of the conservative parties or were independents. Ironically, this new Majlis was expected to be more receptive to economic and educational legislation designed to help low-income families.

Seven candidates—three conservatives, three reformers, and one moderate—contested Iran’s presidential elections in June 2005, but none received a majority of votes, requiring a runoff between the two leading vote-getters, former president Rafsanjani and the mayor of Tehrān, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A member of the Developers Party, which opposes the free market economic policies advocated by Rafsanjani and the reformers, Ahmadinejad was regarded as the conservative candidate. But he ran a populist campaign that underscored Iran’s high unemployment and the growing gap between rich and poor as a result of economic programs enacted between 1997 and 2004. Ahmadinejad called for restoring the spirit of the 1979 revolution by returning to its ideals of social justice. He also called for using Iran’s oil revenues to alleviate the plight of the poor and to benefit middle and low income groups, rather than the wealthy. Ahmadinejad claimed the wealthy consumed most of these revenues in the form of government contracts given out with no accountability or oversight. Known for his loyalty to Khamenei, Ahmadinejad won handily with more than 60 percent of the vote.

In parliamentary elections in March 2008, however, a potential challenge appeared to rise against forces allied with Ahmadinejad. The challenge came from among conservatives, who reportedly criticized the president’s handling of economic problems, particularly rising gasoline prices and shortages. The Council of Guardians had effectively barred most reformers from running in the elections, which resulted in protests from abroad. Ahmadinejad’s allies won the most parliamentary seats but conservative critics of the president won the second largest bloc of seats, followed by the reformers. Political observers said the results of the parliamentary vote signaled that Ahmadinejad might have a difficult time winning reelection in 2009.

Foreign Relations

Since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Iran has also sought to improve its foreign relations. The protracted hostage crisis with the United States had brought international disfavor upon the Islamic republic. As a result, it had received little international support when Iraq invaded in 1980 or during the long years of war. Furthermore, in 1989 Khomeini issued a fatwa that absolved of sin anyone who killed British novelist Salman Rushdie, whose book The Satanic Verses (1988) many Muslims considered offensive to Islam. The fatwa, which Rafsanjani said could not be revoked, strained relations with Britain and other Western nations. Nevertheless, Iran achieved normal relations with most countries under Rafsanjani and Khatami, although there were intermittent periods of political tension with European countries such as Britain, France, and Germany. In 1998 Iran’s foreign minister signed an agreement promising that the Iranian government would not implement the fatwa. This prompted Britain to restore full diplomatic relations with Iran. However, many conservative Iranian politicians insisted the fatwa was still valid, and many organizations within Iran continued to offer large bounties on Rushdie’s life.

Iran's leaders continued to distrust the United States, which they perceived as hostile to their revolution. Likewise, the United States remained deeply suspicious of Iran's regional intentions, believing that Iran was intent on developing nuclear weapons and supported international terrorism. The two countries had unofficial contacts in the early 1990s but failed to resolve their differences. In 1993 the United States, viewing Iran as a threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East, adopted a policy to prevent Iran from gaining too much regional power. In 1995 the United States banned all U.S. trade with and investment in Iran, and in 1996 it drafted a law placing sanctions on non-U.S. companies that invest in Iran. The 1996 legislation became a source of friction between the United States and its own allies. Iran exploited the discord to expand its economic ties with Canada, European Union countries, and Japan.

Khatami’s election as president in 1997 seemed to offer a chance for improved relations between the United States and Iran. In 1998 the United States began to encourage nonofficial cultural exchange programs with Iran and cooperation with the Islamic republic on international issues of mutual interest, such as finding peaceful compromises for the civil war in Afghanistan. United States-Iran relations seemed to improve temporarily after the September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people in the eastern United States. Iran encouraged its main allies in Afghanistan to cooperate with the United States in overthrowing the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, which had supported the al-Qaeda terrorist network responsible for the attacks. Iran also cooperated in setting up a new Afghan government. However, Iran and the United States continued to have serious diplomatic differences regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In January 2002 Israel intercepted a ship carrying Iranian weapons to Palestinians fighting Israel in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. administration of President George W. Bush subsequently singled out Iran as part of an “axis of evil,” alleging that Iran supported terrorist groups such as Hamas and also was pursuing nuclear weapons aggressively.

Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the election of a new parliamentary government there, Iran began to enjoy improved relations with the Iraqi government. Several leaders of the new government, in which Shia religious parties held a parliamentary majority, had lived in exile in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). The improved relations became most visible when Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is also a Shia Muslim as are most Iranians, was warmly welcomed during a state visit to Baghdād, the Iraqi capital, in March 2008, the first such visit since the war between the two countries. The warm relations between the Iranian and Iraqi governments alarmed many in U.S. ruling circles. U.S. military commanders in Iraq accused Iran of providing sophisticated explosive devices to insurgents battling U.S. forces in Iraq, a charge that Iran denied. See also U.S.-Iraq War.

Iran’s Nuclear Program

In December 2003 Iran signed an additional protocol to the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, giving the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) greater authority and broader access to inspect Iran’s nuclear sites. The previous month the IAEA had noted with “gravest concern” that Iran had enriched uranium and separated plutonium, both of which are used in the making of nuclear weapons, at previously undisclosed facilities. The additional protocol was expected to give the international community greater assurance that Iran could not develop nuclear weapons secretly.

In 2005 attention centered on Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities. The 1968 treaty guarantees member nations the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, such as for use in nuclear reactors, but highly enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons and is prohibited by the treaty. In late 2004 the European Union (EU) sought to negotiate an agreement with Iran. Iran agreed to suspend temporarily its uranium-enrichment activities, pending a broader agreement under which the EU would provide economic aid and concessions to Iran in return for a permanent suspension of uranium enrichment. Negotiations were held during the first half of 2005, but no agreement was reached. See also Nuclear Weapons Proliferation.

Iran announced in February 2006 that it had resumed its uranium-enrichment activities. In April 2006 Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had been elected in June 2005, revealed that Iran had successfully enriched uranium to 3.5 percent, making it usable only for nuclear power reactors. The achievement was regarded as a technical milestone. It was reached by successfully operating a cascade of 164 gas centrifuges, the devices used to enrich uranium in the uranium isotope 235 (U-235). U-235 is fissionable, which means it can produce energy. Nuclear weapons experts said that on the basis of its latest achievement, even if Iran was intent on developing an atomic bomb, it could not yet produce sufficient enriched uranium to manufacture a nuclear weapon. They noted that thousands of centrifuges operating in a cascade are necessary to enrich uranium in the amount necessary to make a nuclear bomb and that building such a cascade represented a significant technical hurdle. Uranium must be enriched in the fissionable isotope U-235 to more than 90 percent to make an atomic bomb.

An official with Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said Iran intended to have 3,000 gas centrifuges operating by March 2007. Iranian officials also said that Iran would continue to respect the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and would continue to cooperate with IAEA inspectors to demonstrate that its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes only. Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations (UN) said the country did not have a nuclear weapons program and that Iran’s supreme spiritual leader, Seyed Ali Khamenei, had issued a decree condemning such weapons.

Nevertheless, the April announcement put Iran on a collision course with the United States and the European Union, which had urged Iran to abandon its uranium-enrichment plans. President George W. Bush said the United States did not want Iran to have “the capacity to make a nuclear weapon.” The Bush administration’s 2005 national security strategy also reaffirmed its preemptive military policy and cited Iran as the “single country” that could pose the biggest threat to the United States.

The Bush administration argued vigorously for the United Nations Security Council to impose stiff sanctions on Iran. In December 2006 Russia and China, two permanent members of the Council, agreed to a compromise resolution in which the Security Council imposed limited economic sanctions on Iran. The resolution banned all countries from supplying Iran with materials or technology that could be used in a nuclear weapons program or for building missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. It also gave Iran 60 days in which to cease enriching uranium or else face further sanctions. Iran rejected the resolution, saying it was being punished for exercising its right to develop nuclear energy.

In March 2007 the UN Security Council voted unanimously to tighten sanctions on Iran after a U.S.-led campaign charged that Iran had failed to cease uranium enrichment and was supplying weapons to insurgents in Iraq and to Hezbollah and Hamas, which the United States regards as terrorist organizations. The new sanctions prohibited the sale or transfer of Iranian weapons to any nation or organization. They also froze the overseas assets of a number of Iranian citizens and organizations suspected of involvement in Iran’s nuclear program and its Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s elite military force. Iran again maintained that its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes.

Tensions between the United States and Iran continued throughout 2007. For a brief period the United States Navy stationed two aircraft carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf, where they carried out war exercises. In October the Bush administration took the unusual step of labeling the Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. It was the first time in history that a unit of a nation’s regular military was labeled a terrorist group. The administration imposed sanctions against the Guard Corps, freezing any assets it might have in the United States. Following the designation, Bush said that it was very important to prevent Iran from obtaining the “knowledge necessary” to develop nuclear weapons, warning that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to World War III.

Political observers noted that it was the first time the administration had made a distinction between possessing nuclear weapons and having “the knowledge” to develop them, an apparent reference to Iran’s success in linking gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Vice President Dick Cheney seemed to go even further when he said bluntly, “We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” Mohammed ElBaradei, director of the IAEA, urged the Bush administration to “soften its statements” and give diplomacy a chance to resolve unanswered questions about Iran’s nuclear program. The IAEA had earlier issued a report that Iran was operating its uranium-enrichment centrifuges at below capacity and that it had found no evidence for a nuclear weapons program. ElBaradei maintained that even if Iran had a secret program, it was still six to eight years away from developing a nuclear weapon.

The escalating tensions led to a surprise visit to the capital, Tehrān, by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin in mid-October, the first visit by a Russian president to Iran since 1943. Putin used the occasion of a summit meeting of five nations surrounding the Caspian Sea to reject any calls for the use of military force in the region. All five countries pledged that they would not allow their territories to be used to launch a military attack against one another. Both Russia and China, permanent members of the UN Security Council, initially rejected a call made by France and the United States for a third round of sanctions against Iran. China has become Iran’s leading trade partner. Under newly elected president Nicolas Sarkozy, the French government has joined with the United States in suggesting that military force might be necessary against Iran.

In December 2007, however, the U.S. intelligence community reversed its 2005 assessment that Iran had a nuclear weapons program. Instead, the new assessment by the 16 agencies that make up the intelligence community, including the Central Intelligence Agency, concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. The new conclusions were revealed in the “key judgments” finding on a national intelligence estimate (NIE) report on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Among the key judgments was the finding that the Iranian government’s “decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.” The NIE found that if Iran sought to develop nuclear weapons, it would use uranium enrichment as the means to do so and would probably not be able to develop such weapons before 2010 or 2013.

The revised NIE assessment followed an IAEA report in November that concluded Iran was successfully operating 3,000 gas centrifuges but was not enriching uranium at the level needed to develop a nuclear weapon. The IAEA called Iran’s cooperation with nuclear inspectors “reactive” rather than “proactive” and said its knowledge about Iran’s nuclear program was “diminishing.”

The United States nevertheless continued to pressure member nations of the UN Security Council to impose additional sanctions on Iran for its uranium-enrichment program. In March 2008 the Security Council adopted a compromise resolution that froze the foreign assets of 13 Iranian companies and imposed a travel ban on five Iranian officials. Iran appeared to answer the sanctions by announcing the next month that it had installed an additional 6,000 gas centrifuges at its nuclear complex in Natanz for a total of 9,000 centrifuges. Some nuclear weapons experts, however, reported that Iran was having difficulty operating its original 3,000 centrifuges and there was no evidence that it had mastered the technical difficulties of enriching uranium on an industrial scale.

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Islamic Republic

The Hostage Crisis and the Iran-Iraq War

Economic and Political Developments

Foreign Relations

Iran’s Nuclear Program