Other large cities: Mashad, 2,061,100;
Isfahan, 1,378,600; Tabriz, 1,213,400
Monetary unit: Rial
Languages: Persian and Persian dialects 58%, Turkic and
Turkic dialects 26%, Kurdish 9%, Luri 2%, Balochi 1%, Arabic 1%,
Turkish 1%, other 2%
Ethnicity/race: Persian 51%, Azerbaijani 24%, Gilaki and
Mazandarani 8%, Kurd 7%, Arab 3%, Lur 2%, Baloch 2%, Turkmen 2%, other
1%
Religions: Islam 98% (Shi'a 89%, Sunni 9%); Zoroastrian,
Jewish, Christian, and Baha'i 2%
Literacy rate: 77% (2005 est.)
Economic summary:GDP/PPP (2007 est.):
$852.6 billion; per capita $12,300. Real growth rate: 4.3%.
Inflation: 17%. Unemployment: 11% (2007 est.). Arable
land: 9%. Agriculture: wheat, rice, other grains, sugar
beets, fruits, nuts, cotton; dairy products, wool; caviar. Labor
force: 28.7 million; note: shortage of skilled labor; agriculture
30%, industry 25%, services 45% (2006 est.). Industries:
petroleum, petrochemicals, textiles, cement and other construction
materials, food processing (particularly sugar refining and vegetable
oil production), metal fabrication, armaments. Natural
resources: petroleum, natural gas, coal, chromium, copper, iron
ore, lead, manganese, zinc, sulfur. Exports: $76.5 billion
f.o.b. (2007 est.): petroleum 80%, chemical and petrochemical
products, fruits and nuts, carpets. Imports: $61.3 billion
f.o.b. (2007 est.): industrial raw materials and intermediate goods,
capital goods, foodstuffs and other consumer goods, technical
services, military supplies. Major trading partners: Japan,
China, Italy, South Korea, Turkey, Netherlands, Germany, France, UAE,
South Korea, Russia (2004).
Communications: Telephones: main lines in
use: 21.981 million (2006); mobile cellular: 13.659 million (2006).
Radio broadcast stations: AM 72, FM 5, shortwave 5 (1998).
Television broadcast stations: 28 (plus 450 low-power
repeaters) (1997). Internet hosts: 6,111 (2007). Internet
users: 18 million (2006).
Transportation: Railways: 8,3673 km (2006).
Highways: total: 179,388 km; paved: 120,782 km (including 878
km of expressways); unpaved: 58,606 km (2003). Waterways: 850
km (on Karun River and Lake Urmia) (2004). Ports and harbors:
Assaluyeh, Bushehr. Airports: 331 (2007).
International disputes: Iran protests
Afghanistan's limiting flow of dammed tributaries to the Helmand River
in periods of drought; Iraq's lack of a maritime boundary with Iran
prompts jurisdiction disputes beyond the mouth of the Shatt al Arab in
the Persian Gulf; Iran and UAE engage in direct talks and solicit Arab
League support to resolve disputes over Iran's occupation of Tunb
Islands and Abu Musa Island; Iran stands alone among littoral states
in insisting upon a division of the Caspian Sea into five equal
sectors.
Iran, a Middle Eastern country south of the Caspian Sea and north of
the Persian Gulf, is three times the size of Arizona. It shares borders
with Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Afghanistan, and
Pakistan.
The Elburz Mountains in the north rise to 18,603 ft (5,670 m) at Mount
Damavend. From northwest to southeast, the country is crossed by a desert
800 mi (1,287 km) long.
Government
Iran has been an Islamic theocracy since the Pahlavi monarchy regime
was overthrown on Feb. 11, 1979.
History
The region now called Iran was occupied by the Medes and the Persians
in the 1500s B.C., until the Persian king Cyrus
the Great overthrew the Medes and became ruler of the Achaemenid (Persian)
Empire, which reached from the Indus to the Nile at its zenith in 525
B.C. Persia fell to Alexander in 331–330 B.C. and a succession of other rulers: the Seleucids
(312–302 B.C.), the Greek-speaking Parthians
(247 B.C.–A.D. 226),
the Sasanians (224–c. 640), and the Arab Muslims (in 641). By the mid-800s
Persia had become an international scientific and cultural center. In the
12th century it was invaded by the Mongols. The Safavid dynasty
(1501–1722), under whom the dominant religion became Shiite Islam,
followed, and was then replaced by the Qajar dynasty (1794–1925).
During the Qajar dynasty, the Russians and the British fought for
economic control of the area, and during World War I, Iran's neutrality
did not stop it from becoming a battlefield for Russian and British
troops. A coup in 1921 brought Reza Kahn to power. In 1925, he became shah
and changed his name to Reza Shah Pahlavi. He subsequently did much to
modernize the country and abolished all foreign extraterritorial
rights.
The country's pro-Axis allegiance in World War II led to Anglo-Russian
occupation of Iran in 1941 and deposition of the shah in favor of his son,
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi's Westernization programs alienated the
clergy, and his authoritarian rule led to massive demonstrations during
the 1970s, to which the shah responded with the imposition of martial law
in Sept. 1978. The shah and his family fled Iran on Jan. 16, 1979, and the
exiled cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to establish an Islamic
theocracy. Khomeini proceeded with his plans for revitalizing Islamic
traditions. He urged women to return to wearing the veil; banned alcohol,
Western music, and mixed bathing; shut down the media; closed
universities; and eliminated political parties.
Revolutionary militants invaded the U.S. embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4,
1979, seized staff members as hostages, and precipitated an international
crisis. Khomeini refused all appeals, even a unanimous vote by the UN
Security Council demanding immediate release of the hostages. Iranian
hostility toward Washington was reinforced by the Carter administration's
economic boycott and deportation order against Iranian students in the
U.S., the break in diplomatic relations, and ultimately an aborted U.S.
raid in April 1980 aimed at rescuing the hostages.
As the first anniversary of the embassy seizure neared, Khomeini and
his followers insisted on their original conditions: guarantee by the U.S.
not to interfere in Iran's affairs, cancellation of U.S. damage claims
against Iran, release of $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets, an apology,
and the return of the assets held by the former imperial family. These
conditions were largely met and the 52 American hostages were released on
Jan. 20, 1981, ending 444 days in captivity.
The sporadic war with Iraq regained momentum in 1982, as Iran launched
an offensive in March and regained much of the border area occupied by
Iraq in late 1980. The stalemated war dragged on well into 1988. Although
Iraq expressed its willingness to stop fighting, Iran stated that it would
not end the war until Iraq agreed to pay for war damages and to punish the
Iraqi government leaders involved in the conflict. On July 20, 1988,
Khomeini, after a series of Iranian military reverses, agreed to
cease-fire negotiations with Iraq. A cease-fire went into effect on Aug.
20, 1988. Khomeini died in June 1989 and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei succeeded
him as the supreme leader.
By early 1991 the Islamic revolution appeared to have lost much of its
militancy. Attempting to revive a stagnant economy, President Rafsanjani
took measures to decentralize the command system and introduce free-market
mechanisms.
Mohammed Khatami, a little-known moderate cleric, former newspaperman,
and national librarian, won the presidential election with 70% of the vote
on May 23, 1997, a stunning victory over the conservative ruling elite.
Khatami supported greater social and political freedoms, but his steps
toward liberalizing the strict clerical rule governing the country put him
at odds with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.
Signaling a seismic change in Iran's political environment, reform
candidates won the overwhelming majority of seats in Feb. 2000
parliamentary elections, thereby wresting control from hard-liners, who
had dominated the parliament since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The
parliament's reformist transformation greatly buttressed the efforts of
Khatami in constructing a nation of “lasting pluralism and Islamic
democracy.” Khatami walked a jittery tightrope between student groups and
other liberals pressuring him to introduce bolder freedoms and Iran's
military and conservative clerical elite (including Khamenei), who
expressed growing impatience with the president's liberalizing measures.
In June 2001 presidential elections, Khatami won reelection with a
stunning 77% of the vote.
In Jan. 2002, U.S. president Bush announced that Iran was part of an
“axis of evil,” calling it one of the most active state sponsors of
international terrorism.
By 2003, Iran was fanning much of the world's suspicions that it had
illegal nuclear ambitions. In June 2003, the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) criticized Iran's concealment of much of its nuclear
facilities and called on the country to permit more rigorous inspections
of its nuclear sites. Under intense international pressure, Iran
reluctantly agreed in December to suspend its uranium enrichment program
and allow for thorough IAEA inspections.
On Dec. 26, the most destructive earthquake of 2003 devastated the
historic city of Bam, killing an estimated 28,000 to 30,000 of its 80,000
residents.
In Feb. 2004, conservatives won a landslide victory in parliamentary
elections, a setback for Iran's reformist movement. The hard-line Guardian
Council had disqualified more than 2,500 reformist candidates, including
more than 80 who were already members of the 290-seat parliament. The IAEA
again censured the country in June 2004 for failing to fully cooperate
with nuclear inspections. Neither U.S. threats nor Europe's coaxing
managed to halt Iran's alarming defiance.
In June 2005, former Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hard-line
conservative and a devout follower of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, won the
presidential election with 62% of the vote. Ahmadinejad was highly popular
among Iran's rural poor, who responded to his pledge to fight corruption
among the country's elite. In Aug. 2005, he rejected an EU disarmament
plan that was backed by the U.S. and had been under negotiation for two
years. Ahmadinejad has been defiantly anti-Western and venomously
anti-Israeli, announcing that Israel was a “disgraceful blot” that should
be “wiped off the map.”
In Jan. 2006, Iran removed UN seals on uranium enrichment equipment and
resumed nuclear research. France, Britain, and Germany called off nuclear
talks with Iran, and along with the United States, threatened to refer
Iran to the UN Security Council, a step avoided thus far. Russia and
China, both of whom have strong economic ties to Iran, refused to endorse
sanctions. In April Iran announced it had successfully enriched uranium.
In July a Security Council resolution was finally passed, demanding that
Iran halt its nuclear activities by the end of August or face possible
sanctions.
In December 2006 elections for local councils in Iran, moderate
conservatives and some reformist candidates won the majority of the seats.
The results were seen as a sign of public dissatisfaction with President
Ahmadinejad and his hard-line stances.
In May 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran
is using about 1,300 centrifuges and producing fuel for nuclear reactors,
evidence that the country has flouted another deadline to stop enriching
uranium. The fuel would have to be further enriched to make it weapons
grade, however. In September, Iran followed the IAEA's finding with the
announcement that it had reached its goal of developing 3,000 active
centrifuges.
A National Intelligence Estimate, released in December 2007 and
compiled by the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community, reported
"with high confidence" that Iran had frozen its nuclear weapons program in
2003. The report contradicts one written in 2005 that stated Iran was
determined to continue developing such weapons. The report seemed to
immediately put the brakes on any plans by the Bush administration to
preemptively attack Iran's weapons facilities and to impose another round
of sanctions against Iran. The report suggests that Iran has bowed to
international pressure to end its pursuit of an atomic bomb. "Iran may be
more vulnerable to influence on the issues than we judged previously," it
said. After the release of the intelligence report, President Bush,
however, said Iran remains a threat and can not be trusted to pursue
enriching uranium for civilian use. "Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is
dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous, if they have the knowledge
necessary to make a nuclear weapon," he said. "What’s to say they couldn’t
start another covert nuclear weapons program?"
