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US vs Iran-Backed Militias ..
Iran (also called Persia, and officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a country in
Western Asia. It is bordered to the northwest by
Armenia and
Azerbaijan, to the north by the
Caspian Sea, to the northeast by
Turkmenistan, to the east by
Afghanistan, to the southeast by
Pakistan, to the south by the
Persian Gulf and the
Gulf of Oman, and to the west by
Turkey and
Iraq. Iran covers an area of 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), with a population of 83 million. It is the second-largest country in the
Middle East, and its capital and largest city is
Tehran.
The Government of Iran is an
Islamic theocracy which includes elements of a
presidential democracy, with the ultimate authority vested in an autocratic "Supreme Leader", a position held by
Ali Khamenei since Khomeini's death in 1989. The Iranian government is widely considered to be
authoritarian, and has attracted widespread criticism for its significant constraints and abuses against
human rights and civil liberties, including several violent suppressions of mass protests,
unfair elections, and
limited rights for women and
children.
Iran is a
regional and
middle power, with a geopolitically strategic location in the Asian continent. It is a founding member of the
United Nations, the
ECO, the
OIC, and the
OPEC. It has large reserves of
fossil fuels—including the world's second-largest
natural gas supply and the
fourth-largest proven
oil reserves. The country's rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 22
UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Historically a
multinational state, Iran remains a pluralistic society comprising
numerous ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups, the largest being
Persians,
Azeris,
Kurds,
Mazandaranis and
Lurs.
The
1979 Revolution, later known as the Islamic Revolution, began in
January 1978 with the first major demonstrations against the Shah. After
a year of strikes and
demonstrations paralyzing the country and its economy,
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled to the United States, and Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile to Tehran in February 1979, forming a new government. After holding
a referendum, Iran officially became an
Islamic republic in April 1979.
A second referendum in December 1979 approved
a theocratic constitution.
The immediate nationwide uprisings against the new government began with the
1979 Kurdish rebellion and the
Khuzestan uprisings, along with the uprisings in
Sistan and Baluchestan and other areas. Over the next several years, these uprisings were
subdued in a violent manner by the new Islamic government. The new government began
purging itself of the non-Islamist political opposition, as well as of those Islamists who were not considered radical enough. Although both nationalists and Marxists had initially joined with Islamists to overthrow the Shah, tens of thousands were executed by the new regime afterwards.
[163] Many former ministers and officials in the Shah's government, including former prime minister
Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, were
executed following Khomeini's order to purge the new government of any remaining officials still loyal to the exiled Shah.
On 4 November 1979,
a group of Muslim students seized the United States Embassy and
took the embassy with 52 personnel and citizens hostage, after the United States refused to extradite Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to Iran, where his execution was all but assured. Attempts by the
Jimmy Carter administration to
negotiate for the release of the hostages, and a failed
rescue attempt, helped force Carter out of office and brought
Ronald Reagan to power. On Jimmy Carter's final day in office, the last hostages were finally set free as a result of the
Algiers Accords. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi left the United States for Egypt, where he died of complications from cancer only months later, on 27 July 1980.
The
Cultural Revolution began in 1980, with an initial closure of universities for three years, in order to perform an inspection and clean up in the cultural policy of the education and training system.
On 22 September 1980, the Iraqi army
invaded the western Iranian province of Khuzestan, launching the
Iran–Iraq War. Although the forces of Saddam Hussein made several early advances, by mid 1982, the Iranian forces successfully managed to
drive the Iraqi army back into Iraq. In July 1982, with Iraq thrown on the defensive, the regime of Iran took the decision to invade Iraq and conducted countless offensives in a bid to conquer Iraqi territory and capture cities, such as Basra. The war continued until 1988 when the Iraqi army defeated the Iranian forces inside Iraq and pushed the remaining Iranian troops back across the border. Subsequently, Khomeini accepted
a truce mediated by the United Nations. The total Iranian casualties in the war were estimated to be 123,220–160,000
KIA, 60,711
MIA, and 11,000–16,000
civilians killed.
Following the Iran–Iraq War, in 1989,
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his administration concentrated on a pragmatic pro-business policy of rebuilding and strengthening the economy without making any dramatic break with the ideology of the revolution. In 1997, Rafsanjani was succeeded by moderate
reformist Mohammad Khatami, whose government attempted, unsuccessfully, to make the country more free and democratic.
The
2005 presidential election brought conservative
populist candidate,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to power. By the time of the
2009 Iranian presidential election, the
Interior Ministry announced incumbent President Ahmadinejad had won 62.63% of the vote, while
Mir-Hossein Mousavi had come in second place with 33.75%. The election results were widely disputed, and resulted in
widespread protests, both within Iran and in major cities outside the country, and the creation of the
Iranian Green Movement.
Hassan Rouhani was elected as the president on 15 June 2013, defeating
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and four other candidates. The electoral victory of Rouhani relatively improved the relations of Iran with other countries.
The
2017–18 Iranian protests swept across the country against the government and its longtime Supreme Leader in response to the economic and political situation. The scale of protests throughout the country and the number of people participating were significant, and it was formally confirmed that thousands of protesters were arrested. The
2019–20 Iranian protests started on 15 November in
Ahvaz, spreading across the country within hours, after the government announced increases in the fuel price of up to 300%. A
week-long total Internet shutdown throughout the country marked one of the most severe Internet blackouts in any country, and in the bloodiest governmental crackdown of the protestors in the history of Islamic Republic, tens of thousands were arrested and hundreds were killed within a few days according to multiple international observers, including
Amnesty International.
On 3 January 2020, the revolutionary guard's general,
Qasem Soleimani, was
assassinated by the United States in Iraq, which considerably heightened the
existing tensions between the two countries. Three days after, Iran's
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a
retaliatory attack on US forces in Iraq and by accident shot down
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, killing 176 civilians and leading to
nation-wide protests. An international investigation led to the government admitting to the shootdown of the plane by a surface-to-air missile after three days of denial, calling it a "human error".
Presidential elections were held in Iran on
18 June 2021, the thirteenth since the
establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
Ebrahim Raisi, the then
Chief Justice of Iran, was declared the winner in a
highly controversial election. The election began with the
mass disqualification of popular candidates by the Guardian Council, and broke records of the
lowest turnout in Iranian electoral history (around 49%), as well as had the highest share of
protest blank, invalid and lost votes (around 13%) despite a declaration by the
Supreme Leader of Iran,
Ali Khamenei, considering protest voting religiously forbidden (
haraam) as it would "weaken the regime."
Reporters Without Borders reported 42 cases of journalists being summoned or threatened for writing about candidates, and the chief of the police threatened people who discouraged others to vote.
The Guardian Council announced the approval of seven candidates after the wide disqualification of prominent candidates, including
Ali Larijani,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (the former president of Iran), and
Eshaq Jahangiri (the Incumbent
first Vice President), among others, which provoked many activists and candidates to call for boycotting the election, including Ahmadinejad, who said that he would neither participate nor recognize the election.
Hassan Rouhani, the incumbent Iranian president, could not run for re-election under the constitution of Iran as he had already served his maximum two consecutive terms.
Considered a
"show election" to elect the handpicked candidate of the Iranian Supreme Leader, the elections were the first in Iranian history in which the
invalid ballots (around 3.8 million) outnumbered every non-winning candidate and far outnumbered the votes received by second-placed
Mohsen Rezaee. The elections were widely described as
"neither free nor fair," a "sham," and a "selection" by different international human rights organizations, such as the
Human Rights Watch and the
Center for Human Rights in Iran, and others called for an investigation into an election which saw a person accused of crimes against humanity (referring to the
1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, of which Raisi was a supervisor) becoming the winner.
Iran is home to one of the world's oldest civilizations, beginning with the formation of the
Elamite kingdoms in the fourth millennium BCE. It was first unified by the
Iranian Medes in the seventh century BCE, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BCE, when
Cyrus the Great founded the
Achaemenid Empire, which became
one of the largest empires in history and the world's first superpower. The empire fell to
Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE and was divided into several
Hellenistic states. An Iranian rebellion established the
Parthian Empire in the third century BCE, which was succeeded in the third century CE by the
Sasanian Empire, a major world power for the next four centuries.
Arab Muslims conquered the empire in the seventh century CE, which led to the
Islamization of Iran. It subsequently becoming a major center of
Islamic culture and learning, with its art, literature, philosophy, and architecture spreading across the Muslim world and beyond during the
Islamic Golden Age. Over the next two centuries, a series of
native Muslim dynasties emerged before the
Seljuq Turks and the
Mongols conquered the region. In the 15th century, the native
Safavids re-established a unified Iranian state and national identity and
converted the country to Shia Islam. Under the reign of
Nader Shah in the 18th century, Iran once again became a major world power, though by the 19th century a
series of conflicts with
Russia led to significant territorial losses.
