Iran

PAGE CONTENTS:

Who Really Rules Iran?

How Iran Got Religion

Modern Iran

Iran by the Numbers

Who Really Rules Iran?

"Iran calls itself an Islamic republic. It holds presidential and parliamentary elections every four years in which every adult can vote, and most do. It all sounds democratic. So why does the West call Iran a theocracy?" We'll give you two good reasons.

Supreme Leadership

Since its revolution, Iran has operated under a dual power structure in which Muslim clerics--or institutions they dominate--oversee republican institutions, including the presidency and parliament. Within the system, Iran's elected leaders aren't its most powerful figures. Iranians elect their president, for example, but they don't elect their supreme leader--currently Ayatollah Khamenei, successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The president runs the country on a day-to-day basis, but the supreme leader is a lifetime appointee who sets the direction of national policy. He is also an important religious figure. (In fact, one knock on Supreme Leader Khamenei is that, unlike his predecessor, he is not an "object of emulation" within the Shi'ite hierarchy--so, theologically, a few other ayatollahs actually outrank him.)

The supreme leader is even the commander-in-chief of Iran's armed forces, and the only person empowered to declare war. He appoints the commanders of the regular army, the national police, and the revolutionary guards--not to mention the chief of state radio and television. He also appoints the head of the judiciary and half of the members of the "Council of Guardians."

Parliament's Guardians

Iranians elect representatives to their parliament, the Majlis, but they don't elect the Council of Guardians, a 12-member panel that must approve every piece of legislation the Majlis proposes. The supreme leader appoints six of the council's members (specialists in Islamic law, like the leader himself). The Majlis appoints the other six, but it has to choose from 12 lawyers nominated by the head of the judiciary--who is, you remember, appointed by the supreme leader.

Basically, the council decides whether legislation the Majlis proposes fits with Islamic law and the Iranian constitution. Legislation found unfit goes back to the Majlis or gets rejected out of hand. Parliament can complain, but disputes between the Majlis and the Council of Guardians are mediated by another council: the Expediency Council, members of which--you guessed it--the supreme leader appoints. The Council of Guardians also gets to decide who is, and who isn't, fit to run for political office in Iran.

Many are deemed unfit. Before Majlis elections in 2004, the Council of Guardians disqualified thousands of candidates. According to the council, they were insufficiently dedicated to Islam. According to the council's critics, many were simply reformers whose political views the conservative council didn't like. Widespread protests ensued, and the council reinstated some candidates, but conservatives still won big in the election. Unfortunately for them, getting elected is one thing. Having the power is something else.

--Steve Sampson
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How Iran Got Religion

When Alexander the Great conquered ancient Iran in 330 BC, the mighty Macedonian tried to arrange a marriage between the victors and the vanquished--literally. In 324 BC, Alexander and 80 of his top officers tied the knot with Persian brides. He also gave generous dowries to 10,000 other soldiers who got hitched with local gals.

No one knows how long those marriages lasted, but for the next 500 years, Greek and Persian traditions mixed, as first the Seleucid Greeks and then the Parthians ruled Iran. Divorce didn't come until AD 224, when the governor of the province of Persis (ancient home of the Persians) overthrew his overlords and established the Sassanid dynasty.

The Sassanids tried hard to weed out Greek influence and return to Persian roots. They also made Zoroastrianism, which dated back to the ancient Persians but was not their faith, the official state religion.

Zoroastrians believe the world is locked in an ongoing battle between good and evil, so it's a safe bet the Sassanids saw their archenemy, the Byzantine Romans, as evil. The two empires warred continually from the 3rd to the 7th century, alternately seizing and conceding each other's territory.

Then, in the mid-7th century, Islam's Arabic armies arrived on the scene and beat them both up--in part because they were exhausted from fighting each other. The Sassanid dynasty fell for good in 651, and Iran became part of the Muslim caliphate, a religious and political empire that eventually stretched from Spain to India.

From 661 to 750, caliphs from the Umayyad clan ruled the Muslim world from their capital in Damascus. The Umayyads learned economic and administrative policymaking from the conquered Persians. In return, they delivered Islam, which began to win converts all over Iran. The Umayyads offered relative religious tolerance to all who accepted their rule, but social, legal, and good old-fashioned financial incentives helped make the religion of Allah attractive to Zoroastrians.

In 750, Abaasid caliphs overthrew the Umayyads and moved the capital of all Muslimdom from Damascus to Baghdad. For a time, Iran enjoyed an Abbasid cultural and economic boom. But by the end of the 9th century, only an echo of that boom remained, and a variety of homegrown, smaller-scale dynasties assumed increasing control in regions across Iran.

Islam, however, remained a major unifying force. By the 10th century, Muslims likely made up a majority in Iran--though back then, most Iranian Muslims followed orthodox Sunni Islam. Shia Islam, the most common denomination in Iran today, was prevalent only in certain regions.

In the 11th century, Turkish tribes began moving in on Iranian lands. One of them, the Seljuks, even conquered the local kings and established a short-lived dynasty--though a secret Shia sect, the Ismailis, effectively maintained an independent state around Tehran.

Neither the Seljuks nor the Ismailis, however, proved a match for Genghis Khan's Mongols, who arrived in Iran in the early 13th century. Initially, the Mongols ruled Iran brutally, and their hostility toward Islam fueled Muslim militancy. But after a few generations, the Khans themselves converted to Islam and conditions in Iran improved.

Another fearsome conqueror, Timur (a.k.a. Tamerlane) overran Iran in the late 14th century, but the empire he built collapsed after his death in 1405. For the next hundred years, a variety of Mongols, Uzbeks, and others ruled various Iranian regions.

Among those local rulers were the Safavids, leaders of a militant order that adopted Shia Islam sometime in the mid-15th century. In 1502, the Safavids proclaimed their leader "shah," or king, of Iran and seized control of the country.

Under the Safavids, Iran became a theocracy, with Shia Islam as the new state religion. The state didn't hesitate to promote the Shia cause, either--through proselytizing and, in some cases, outright force. In the coming decades, a large majority of Iran's Muslims became Shias. Meanwhile, the new shah and his successors--who enjoyed both secular and sacred authority--began to lay the foundation of the modern Iranian state. We'll retrace that state's rise tomorrow.

--Steve Sampson

Modern Iran

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Iran's Shia Safavids waged a war for Muslim hearts and minds against the Sunni Ottoman Turks. They enjoyed some successes in the intermittent struggle. They even conquered Iraq. But eventually their empire fell into decline--especially after Safavid shahs levied heavy taxes to finance lavish lifestyles rather than Shia jihad.

The final Safavid straw came in 1722, when the shah tried to convert Afghan Sunnis to Shia Islam by force. The Afghans rebelled, laid siege to the Safavids' capital, and executed the offending shah.

During the ensuing instability, Ottoman and Russian forces encroached on Iran's borders. Then, in the 1730s, the "Persian Napoleon," Nadir Shah, seized control. Nadir Shah kicked the foreigners out and built a new Iranian empire. He conquered Afghanistan and invaded India, too, but his budding dynasty died with him in 1747. Iran fell into relative disorder until 1794, when a local ruler, Agha Mohammad Shah, overcame all rivals and founded the Qajar dynasty.

The Qajars set up shop in Tehran (which has been Iran's capital ever since) and waged two disastrous wars against the Russians. In the first, the Qajars lost Georgia. In the second, they lost Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Russians kept pushing, too. During the 1830s and '40s, they expanded their political influence inside Iran--and caught the attention of another western power, the British, who wanted to limit the czar's reach to points well west of British India. But neither imperial power wanted a war over Iran. Both preferred peace and a weak Iranian government, which they worked together to achieve.

The Qajars stayed in power, but were increasingly beholden to the imperial powers. To raise cash, they gave trade concessions to westerners and watched while high-ranking officials accepted outsiders' bribes. By the start of the 20th century, much of the population saw the government as fundamentally corrupt.

Eventually, protests by Muslim clerics grew into a popular movement demanding a written constitution that limited the shah's powers through an elected parliament called the Majlis. With strikes and demonstrations, the movement won its campaign in 1906. Shah Muzaffar ad Din signed the constitution on December 30, 1906. Five days later, he died.

Unfortunately, hopes for constitutional rule barely outlived him. In 1908, the Russians supported an attempt to eliminate the Majlis and roll back the constitution. Pro-constitution forces chased the shah into exile, but by the end of 1911, Russian troops were in northern Iran. Within months, the Majlis had been dismissed and the constitution suspended.

Then, in 1914, World War I broke out. Iran proclaimed itself neutral, but British and Russian forces nevertheless staged attacks against the Ottomans (who were allied with the Germans) from Iranian soil. Fallout from the fighting produced a famine in parts of the country, and the government's impotence in the face of both fighting and famine fueled separatist movements.

In 1921, an officer in the Persian Cossacks Brigade, Reza Khan, joined up with a prominent journalist, Sayyid Zia ad Din Tabatabai, to seize control in Tehran. At first, the journalist played the role of prime minister, but within a few months he had been forced into exile. Within a few years, Reza Khan had become not only prime minister but shah.

Reza Shah Pahlavi, as he was now called, worked quickly to modernize Iran. He built a disciplined military and used it to unify the nation. He expanded the Iranian bureaucracy and established a public school system open to girls as well as boys. He built new roads and factories, abolished the wearing of veils, and imposed European fashions. He also wielded dictatorial power, silenced his critics brutally, and used his power to pad his pockets.

In part because he feared continued interference from Britain and Russia (reborn as the Soviet Union), Reza Shah cultivated economic ties with Germany in the 1930s. When World War II broke out, Iran once again declared its neutrality, but in 1941 the British and Soviets invaded to ensure supply routes across the Iranian plateau. Resistance was futile. Reza Shah abdicated in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Shah, who promised to serve as a constitutional monarch.

When the war was over, men's minds turned to thoughts of oil. First the Soviets tried to keep control over oil-rich areas in the north, precipitating what's known as the Azerbaijan Crisis (the first case ever brought before the U.N. Security Council). Then, after the Soviets went home, democratically elected Majlis member Mohammad Mossadeq led a movement to nationalize Iran's oil industry.

Not only did Mossadeq achieve that policy goal, he also became immensely popular, ultimately taking over as prime minister. Unfortunately for Mossadeq, neither the British nor the Americans liked him much, and in 1953 CIA agents helped the shah topple him.

With Mossadeq out of the way, the shah consolidated power. But because of the CIA's role in Mossadeq's overthrow, and subsequent special treatment the shah gave the United States, many Iranians came to see Mohammad Reza Shah as an American puppet. Many also came to view the United States as the economic and spiritual heir to the British and Russian imperialists--and they deeply resented any American interference in their affairs.

Perhaps the most outspoken critic of all was the Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, a major Shia spiritual leader. After Khomeini made a particularly fiery speech in 1963, the shah had him arrested, only to see three days of violent riots erupt. Suppressing the riots and sending Khomeini into exile the following year calmed the country down for a while, but discontent continued to mount.

In 1971, Khomeini published a book that laid out the religious justification for Islamic rule in Iran. In 1979, after more than a year of violent protests, the shah fled Iran and Khomeini came home in triumph. Within a few weeks, the shah's government had been overthrown. Within a year, Iranians had voted overwhelmingly to establish an Islamic republic and taken 66 hostages at the American embassy. Khomeini would rule as the country's "supreme leader" until his death in 1989. His successors still rule.

--Steve Sampson

Iran by the Numbers

1935 - The year Iran asked the West to stop labeling the place "Persia" and to start using the name natives use: "Iran." The language is still called Persian, though, or Farsi--from the modern province Fars (ancient Parsa, called Persis by the Greeks). Today, Persian is written in Arabic script, a holdover from medieval times, when Persian rulers fell to Islamic caliphs in Damascus and Baghdad.

1979 - The year an Islamic revolution forced Iran's western-supported shah ("king") into exile and Iranians voted overwhelmingly to establish an Islamic republic. In the republic, all adult citizens can vote, but clerics can veto laws and candidates deemed un-Islamic.

636,300 - Iran's total area, in square miles (1,648,000 sq km). That's slightly larger than the state of Alaska, and nearly four times the size of Iraq. The country sits on a vast waterless plateau, ringed by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the population lives at the foot of these mountains.

70 million - Iran's total population. That's more than France or the United Kingdom, but less than Germany or Turkey. It's a youthful country--about half of its people are under 25--and increasingly urban. In 1950, about a quarter of the population lived in cities. Now, more than 60 percent do.

7.7 million - The population of Tehran, Iran's largest and capital city. More than 13 million people live in its metropolitan area, at the southern foot of the Elburz Mountains, not far from the Caspian Sea. More than half of the country's growing industry is based there.

89 - Percent of the population that is Shi'a Muslim. Nearly everyone else is Sunni Muslim. The Shi'ite branch of Islam is the official state religion, and the nation's post-revolution constitution guarantees Islamic principles of government.

85 - Percent of government revenues that come from oil. Only Saudi Arabia exports more crude than Iran, which is also one of the world's leading natural gas exporters.

--Michael Himick

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