INDEPTH: IRAN
History
Gary Katz, CBC News Online | Updated June 17, 2003
Revolution 1979-1999
But the Iran-Iraq war was not to be the shah's war. By 1979, one year before the first shots were fired, he was driven from Iran and the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini returned triumphantly.
Modernization and Westernization had many enemies in Iran, and therefore so did the shah. His love of ostentatious wealth offended the poor, both in the cities and in the rural areas. His iron-fisted rule and fearsome secret police raised extensive opposition. The clergy, who had lost most during the drive to secularism, led a revolt. Khomeini, from his exile in France, demanded that the shah abdicate.
The shah reinstated martial law, but the popular uprising against him proved unstoppable, and in early 1979 he fled the country.
Opponents of the shah, who considered the U.S. to be the embodiment of the Satanic West, were overjoyed by the fact that his departure from power was a harsh blow to the U.S. When the American embassy in Tehran was seized later that year and 52 hostages held, it was one of the greatest affronts the Americans had ever faced.
Khomeini returned triumphantly to Iran, and the remnants of the shah's government were quickly destroyed. Islam had won over Westernization, and religious rule over secularism. Iran was an Islamic republic and, by the new constitution, supreme political authority was vested in the clergy and the theologians.
Fundamentalist Muslim codes were enacted and Western influence - including dress and music - suppressed. Women were again veiled. The new constitution seemed to support a presidential system, though Khomeini, the religious leader, kept the real power. The judiciary was packed with religious jurists right up to the Supreme Court. It seemed that a return to conservatism and Islamic religion was to be the major preoccupation of the time.
But, as it turned out, the 1980s were characterized by mutually destructive war with Iraq. Even more than most wars, it was a lose-lose situation. The economies of both nations were in shambles by the end of the conflict.
In 1989, a year after the end of the war, Khomeini died and Iran once again took tentative steps out of its international isolation. But the old problem -- the essential, irreconcilable conflict between Islam and Westernization, between secular state and theocracy-- continued to plague the nation.
In 1997, Mohammed Khatami was elected president by appealing to the part of the Iranian population which desired a movement toward democracy.
By 1999, many of those who put Khatami in power pressed him to fulfill his promise of increased democratization. The ensuing protests resulted in the worst conflict in two decades, filling the streets of the capital Tehran and over a dozen other cities with violence and death.
Religious Iranians, conservatives, and even Khatami himself denounced the rebels - university students mostly - as dangerous to civil order and probably 'evil'.
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| QUICK FACTS: |
Official Title:
Islamic Republic of Iran
Area:
1.648 million sq. km
Arable land:
10.17%
Irrigated land:
75,629 sq. km
Land borders:
5,440 km
Coastline:
2,400 km along the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, also 740 km along the Caspian Sea
Climate:
Mostly arid or semi-arid, subtropical along Caspian Sea
Terrain:
Mostly a central desert basin surrounded by mountainous rims
Government:
Theocratic republic
Capital:
Tehran
Head of State:
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Khamenei
Head of Government:
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Population - July 2005:
68 million
Age structure:
0-14: 27.1%
15-64: 68.0%
65 and over: 4.9%
Life expectancy at birth:
Male - 68.58 years
Female - 71.40 years
Literacy (15 and over):
79.4%
Gross Domestic Product:
$552 billion US (2005)
GDP by sector (2002):
Agriculture 11.8%
Industry 43.3%
Services 44.9%
Inflation rate:
16% (2005)
Unemployment rate:
11.2% (2005)
Population living below
poverty line:
40% (2002 est.)
Sources:
CIA World Fact Book
CBC News
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Iran presidency website
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