Chapter culture of Spain

Second presidential term of Mohammad Khatami: continued intervention

In 2001 President Khatami was reelected by an overwhelming majority. Although his victory was considered an expression of support for his programs of reform, at the beginning of his second term there was less popular confidence in his ability to bring about swift and dramatic political change. Attempts by the judiciary to curb pro-reform elements accelerated after Khatami’s reelection, including arrests and acts of public censure. In November 2002 Hashem Aghajari, a prominent reform-minded academic, was sentenced to death by a court in western Iran following a speech he made in support of religious reform, sparking the largest student protests since those of 1999. Aghajari’s death sentence was subsequently reduced, reinstated, and reduced again before he was released on bail in August 2004.
In the month before the Majles elections scheduled for February 2004, the Council of Guardians announced that almost half the candidates in a pool of some 8,000, including many reformists, would be disqualified from participating in the coming elections. The decision—which entailed a ban on some 80 sitting members of the Majles, including President Khatami’s brother—sparked a political crisis, and Khatami himself was among those who subsequently threatened to resign if the ban were not lifted. Following direct intervention by Ayatollah Khamenei, the council reinstated some of the candidates; nevertheless, the conservatives, as expected, emerged victorious in the elections, replacing the more moderate outgoing cabinet.

Iraq
Iraq is dominated by two famous rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates.

FAST FACTS
OFFICIAL NAME: Republic of Iraq
FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Parliamentary democracy
CAPITAL: Baghdad
POPULATION: 40,194,216
OFFICIAL LANGUAGES: Arabic, Kurdish
MONEY: New Iraq dinar
AREA: 168,754 square miles (437,072 square kilometers)
MAJOR RIVERS: Tigris, Euphrates
GEOGRAPHY

Iraq is dominated by two famous rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. They flow southeast from the highlands in the north across the plains toward the Persian Gulf. The fertile region between these rivers has had many names throughout history, including Al-Jazirah, or "the island," in Arabic and Mesopotamia in Greek.
Many parts of Iraq are harsh places to live. Rocky deserts cover about 40 percent of the land. Another 30 percent is mountainous with bitterly cold winters. Much of the south is marshy and damp. Most Iraqis live along the fertile plains of the Tigris and Euphrates.
Map created by National Geographic Maps

A man descends a structure called a ziggurat in Ur, Iraq.
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVE MCCURRY, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
PEOPLE AND CULTURE
Iraq is one of the most culturally diverse nations in the Middle East. Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrians, Mandaeans, and Armenians, among others, speak their own languages and retain their cultural and religious identities.
Iraqis once had some of the best schools and colleges in the Arab world. That changed after the Gulf War in 1991 and the United Nations sanctions that followed. Today only about 40 percent of Iraqis can read or write.
NATURE
Safeguarding Iraq's wildlife is a big job. There are essentially no protected natural areas in the country. And with an ongoing war, the government is, understandably, more concerned with protecting people and property than plants and animals.
Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, several species were considered at risk, including cheetahs, wild goats, and dugongs. Scientists have not been able to assess the condition of these animals since the war started.
Iraq's rivers and marshes are home to many fish, including carp that can grow up to 300 pounds (135 kilograms) and sharks that swim up from the Persian Gulf.
GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMY
In January 2005, Iraqis voted in the country's first democratic elections in more than 50 years. It took another three months for a government to take office, but Iraq's new democracy was set up to ensure all ethnic groups are represented.
Iraq has the world's second largest supply of oil. But international sanctions during the 1990s and the instability caused by the 2003 war have left Iraq in poverty.


LEFT: IRAQI FLAG
RIGHT: IRAQ DINAR
Photograph by L Hill, Dreamstime
HISTORY
Iraq's history is full of unsettling changes. In the past 15 years alone, it has witnessed two major wars, international sanctions, occupation by a foreign government, revolts, and terrorism. But Iraq is a land where several ancient cultures left stamps of greatness on the country, the region, and the world.
Iraq is nicknamed the "cradle of civilization." Thousands of years ago, on the plains that make up about a third of Iraq, powerful empires rose and fell while people in Europe and the Americas were still hunting and gathering and living more primitive lives.
The Sumerians had the first civilization in Iraq around 3000 B.C. The first type of writing, called cuneiform, came out of Uruk, a Sumerian city-state. Around 2000 B.C., the Babylonians came into power in southern Mesopotamia. Their king, Hammurabi, established the first known system of laws.
Babylonian rule ended in 539 B.C. when the Persians took over. In A.D. 646, Arabs overthrew the Persians and introduced Islam to Iraq. Baghdad was soon established as the leading city of the Islamic world. In 1534, the Ottomans from Turkey conquered Iraq and ruled until the British took over almost 400 years later.
Iraq became an independent country in 1932, although the British still had a big influence. In 1979, Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party took control of Iraq and promoted the idea that it should be ruled by Arabs. Hussein ruled as a ruthless dictator. In 1980, he started a long war with Iran, and in 1991, he invaded Kuwait, triggering the first Gulf War.
In 2003, after years of sanctions against Iraq, the United States invaded again out of concern that Saddam Hussein was making dangerous weapons. U.S. military forces quickly reached Baghdad and threw the Baathists from power. Saddam Hussein was captured, tried for crimes against humanity, and executed.
This article is about the 1979 revolution. For the 1905–1911 revolution, see Persian Constitutional Revolution. For the series of reforms launched in 1963, see White Revolution. For the current civil unrest, see Mahsa Amini protests.
"1979 Revolution" redirects here. For the video game based on the events, see 1979 Revolution: Black Friday.
The Iranian Revolution (Persian: انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân [ʔeɴɢeˌlɒːbe ʔiːɾɒːn]), or the Islamic Revolution (انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī),[4] was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979. The revolution also led to the replacement of the Imperial State of Iran by the present-day Islamic Republic of Iran, as the monarchical government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was superseded by the theocratic government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a religious cleric who had headed one of the rebel factions. The ousting of Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, formally marked the end of Iran's historical monarchy.[5]
After the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, Pahlavi aligned Iran with the Western Bloc and cultivated a close relationship with the United States to consolidate his power as an authoritarian ruler. Relying heavily on American support amidst the Cold War, he remained the Shah of Iran for 26 years after the coup, effectively keeping the country from swaying towards the influence of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union.[6][7]
Beginning in 1963, Pahlavi implemented a number of reforms aimed at modernizing Iranian society, in what is known as the White Revolution. In light of his continued vocal opposition to the modernization campaign after being arrested twice, Khomeini was exiled from Iran in 1964. However, as major ideological tensions persisted between Pahlavi and Khomeini, anti-government demonstrations began in October 1977, eventually developing into a campaign of civil resistance that included elements of secularism and Islamism.[8][9][10] In August 1978, the deaths of between 377 and 470 people in the Cinema Rex fire — claimed by the opposition as having been orchestrated by Pahlavi's SAVAK — came to serve as a catalyst for a popular revolutionary movement across all of Iran,[11][12] and large-scale strikes and demonstrations paralyzed the entire country for the remainder of that year.
On 16 January 1979, Pahlavi left the country and went into exile as the last Iranian monarch,[13] leaving behind his duties to Iran's Regency Council and Shapour Bakhtiar, the opposition-based Iranian prime minister. On 1 February 1979, Khomeini returned to Iran, following an invitation by the government;[6][14] several thousand Iranians gathered to greet him as he landed in the capital city of Tehran.[15] By 11 February 1979, the monarchy was officially brought down and Khomeini assumed leadership over Iran while guerrillas and rebel troops overwhelmed Pahlavi loyalists in armed combat.[16][17] Following the March 1979 Islamic Republic referendum, in which 98% of Iranian voters approved the country's shift to an Islamic republic, the new government began efforts to draft the present-day Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran;[18][8][9][19][20] Ayatollah Khomeini emerged as the Supreme Leader of Iran in December 1979.[21]
The success of the Iranian Revolution was met with surprise around the world,[22] and was considered by many to be unusual in nature: it lacked many of the customary causes of revolutionary sentiment (e.g., defeat in war, a financial crisis, peasant rebellion, or disgruntled military);[23] occurred in a country that was experiencing relative prosperity;[6][20] produced profound change at great speed;[24] was massively popular; resulted in the massive exile that characterizes a large portion of today's Iranian diaspora;[25] and replaced a pro-Western secular[26] and authoritarian monarchy[6] with an anti-Western Islamist theocracy[6][19][20][27] that was based on the concept of Velâyat-e Faqih (or Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist), straddling between authoritarianism and totalitarianism.[28] In addition to declaring the destruction of Israeli state as a core ideological objective of its revolution,[29][30] post-revolutionary Iran also aimed to undermine the influence of Sunni leaders in the region, by supporting Shi'ite political ascendancy and exporting Khomeinist doctrines abroad.[31] After the consolidation of Khomeinist factions, Iran began to back Shia militancy across the region in an attempt to combat Sunni influence and establish Iranian dominance within the Arab world, ultimately aiming to achieve an Iranian-led Shia political order.[32]
Background (1891–1977)[edit]
Main article: Background and causes of the Iranian Revolution
Reasons advanced for the revolution and its populist, nationalist, and later Shia Islamic character include:
A backlash against imperialism;
The 1953 Iranian coup d'état;
A rise in expectations created by the 1973 oil revenue windfall;
An overly ambitious economic program;
Anger over a short, sharp economic contraction in 1977–1978; and[Note 1]
Other shortcomings of the previous regime.
The Shah's regime was seen as an oppressive, brutal,[37][38] corrupt, and lavish regime by some of the society's classes at that time.[37][39] It also suffered from some basic functional failures that brought economic bottlenecks, shortages, and inflation.[40] The Shah was perceived by many as beholden to—if not a puppet of—a non-Muslim Western power (i.e., the United States)[41][42] whose culture was affecting that of Iran. At the same time, support for the Shah may have waned among Western politicians and media—especially under the administration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter—as a result of the Shah's support for OPEC petroleum price increases earlier in the decade.[43] When President Carter enacted a human-rights policy which said that countries guilty of human-rights violations would be deprived of American arms or aid, this helped give some Iranians the courage to post open letters and petitions in the hope that the repression by the government might subside.[44]
The revolution that substituted the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi with Islam and Khomeini is credited in part to the spread of the Shi'a version of the Islamic revival. It resisted westernization and saw Ayatollah Khomeini as following in the footsteps of the Shi'a Imam Husayn ibn Ali, with the Shah playing the role of Husayn's foe, the hated tyrant Yazid I.[45] Other factors include the underestimation of Khomeini's Islamist movement by both the Shah's reign—who considered them a minor threat compared to the Marxists and Islamic socialists[46][47][48]—and by the secularist opponents of the government—who thought the Khomeinists could be sidelined.[49]
Tobacco Protest (1891)[edit]
Main article: Tobacco Protest
At the end of the 19th century, the Shi'a clergy (ulama) had a significant influence on Iranian society. The clergy first showed itself to be a powerful political force in opposition to the monarchy with the 1891 Tobacco Protest. On 20 March 1890, the long-standing Iranian monarch Nasir al-Din Shah granted a concession to British Major G. F. Talbot for a full monopoly over the production, sale, and export of tobacco for 50 years.[50] At the time, the Persian tobacco industry employed over 200,000 people, so the concession represented a major blow to Persian farmers and bazaaris whose livelihoods were largely dependent on the lucrative tobacco business.[51] The boycotts and protests against it were widespread and extensive as result of Mirza Hasan Shirazi's fatwa (judicial decree).[52] Within 2 years, Nasir al-Din Shah found himself powerless to stop the popular movement and cancelled the concession.[53]
The Tobacco Protest was the first significant Iranian resistance against the Shah and foreign interests, revealing the power of the people and the ulama influence among them.[50]
Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911)[edit]
Main article: Persian Constitutional Revolution
The growing dissatisfaction continued until the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1911. The revolution led to the establishment of a parliament, the National Consultative Assembly (also known as the Majlis), and approval of the first constitution. Although the constitutional revolution was successful in weakening the autocracy of the Qajar regime, it failed to provide a powerful alternative government. Therefore, in the decades following the establishment of the new parliament, a number of critical events took place. Many of these events can be viewed as a continuation of the struggle between the constitutionalists and the Shahs of Persia, many of whom were backed by foreign powers against the parliament.
Reza Shah (1921–1941)[edit]
Main article: Rezā Shāh
Insecurity and chaos created after the Constitutional Revolution led to the rise of General Reza Khan, the commander of the elite Persian Cossack Brigade who seized power in a coup d'état in February 1921. He established a constitutional monarchy, deposing the last Qajar Shah, Ahmed Shah, in 1925 and being designated monarch by the National Assembly, to be known thenceforth as Reza Shah, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty.
There were widespread social, economic, and political reforms introduced during his reign, a number of which led to public discontent that would provide the circumstances for the Iranian Revolution. Particularly controversial was the replacement of Islamic laws with Western ones and the forbidding of traditional Islamic clothing, separation of the sexes, and veiling of women's faces with the niqab.[54] Police forcibly removed and tore chadors off women who resisted his ban on the public hijab.
In 1935, dozens were killed and hundreds injured in the Goharshad Mosque rebellion.[55][56][57] On the other hand, during the early rise of Reza Shah, Abdul-Karim Ha'eri Yazdi founded the Qom Seminary and created important changes in seminaries. However, he would avoid entering into political issues, as did other religious leaders who followed him. Hence, no widespread anti-government attempts were organized by the clergy during the rule of Reza Shah. However, the future Ayatollah Khomeini was a student of Sheikh Abdul Karim Ha'eri.[58]
Anglo-Soviet invasion and Mohammad Reza Shah (1941-1951)[edit]
Main articles: Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
In 1941, an invasion of allied British and Soviet troops deposed Reza Shah, who was considered friendly to Nazi Germany, and installed his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Shah.[59] Iran remained under Soviet occupation until the Red Army withdrew in June 1946.[60]
The post-war years were characterized by political instability, as the Shah clashed with the pro-Soviet Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam, the communist Tudeh Party grew in size and influence and the Iranian Army had to deal with Soviet-sponsored separatist movements in Iranian Azerbaijan and Iranian Kurdistan.[61]
Mosaddegh and The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (1951–1952)[edit]
Main articles: Mohammad Mosaddegh and Anglo-Persian Oil Company
From 1901 on, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1931), a British oil company, enjoyed a monopoly on sale and production of Iranian oil. It was the most profitable British business in the world.[62] Most Iranians lived in poverty while the wealth generated from Iranian oil played a decisive role in maintaining Britain at the top of the world. In 1951, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh pledged to throw the company out of Iran, reclaim the petroleum reserves and free Iran from foreign powers.
In 1952, Mosaddegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and became a national hero. The British, however, were outraged and accused him of stealing. The British unsuccessfully sought punishment from the International Court of Justice and the United Nations, sent warships to the Persian Gulf, and finally imposed a crushing embargo. Mosaddegh was unmoved by Britain's campaign against him. One European newspaper, the Frankfurter Neue Presse, reported that Mosaddegh "would rather be fried in Persian oil than make the slightest concession to the British." The British considered an armed invasion, but UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided on a coup after being refused American military support by U.S. President Harry S. Truman, who sympathized with nationalist movements like Mosaddegh's and had nothing but contempt for old-style imperialists like those who ran the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Mosaddegh, however, learned of Churchill's plans and ordered the British embassy to be closed in October 1952, forcing all British diplomats and agents to leave the country.
Although the British were initially turned down in their request for American support by President Truman, the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as U.S. president in November 1952 changed the American stance toward the conflict. On 20 January 1953, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, C.I.A. Director Allen Dulles, told their British counterparts that they were ready to move against Mosaddegh. In their eyes, any country not decisively allied with the United States was a potential enemy. Iran had immense oil wealth, a long border with the Soviet Union, and a nationalist prime minister. The prospect of a fall into communism and a "second China" (after Mao Zedong won the Chinese Civil War) terrified the Dulles brothers. Operation Ajax was born, in which the only democratic government Iran ever had was deposed.[63]
Iranian coup d'état (1953)[edit]
Main article: 1953 Iranian coup d'état
On 15 August 1953 a coup d'état was initiated to remove Mosaddegh, with the support of the United States, the United Kingdom and most of the Shia clergy.[63] The Shah fled to Italy when the initial coup attempt on August 15 failed, but returned after a successful second attempt on August 19.[64] Mosaddegh was removed from power and put under house arrest, while lieutenant general Fazlollah Zahedi was appointed as new Prime Minister by the Shah. The sovereign, who was mainly seen as a figurehead at the time, eventually managed to break free from the shackles of the Iranian elites and impose himself as an autocratic reformist ruler.[65]
Pahlavi maintained a close relationship with the U.S. government, as both regimes shared opposition to the expansion of the Soviet Union, Iran's powerful northern neighbor. Leftist and Islamist groups attacked his government (often from outside Iran as they were suppressed within) for violating the Iranian constitution, political corruption, and the political oppression, torture, and killings, by the SAVAK secret police.
White Revolution (1963–1978)[edit]
Main article: White Revolution
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
The White Revolution was a far-reaching series of reforms in Iran launched in 1963 by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and lasted until 1978. Mohammad Reza Shah's reform program was built especially to weaken those classes that supported the traditional system. It consisted of several elements including land reform; sales of some state-owned factories to finance the land reform; the enfranchisement of women; nationalization of forests and pastures; formation of a literacy corps; and the institution of profit-sharing schemes for workers in industry.

Hoping to break Khomeini's contacts with the opposition, the Shah pressured the Iraqi government to expel him from Najaf. Khomeini left Iraq, instead moving to a house bought by Iranian exiles in Neauphle-le-Château, a village near Paris, France. The Shah hoped that Khomeini would be cut off from the mosques of Najaf and be cut off from the protest movement. Instead, the plan backfired badly. With superior French telephone and postal connections (compared to Iraqi ones), Khomeini's supporters flooded Iran with tapes and recordings of his sermons.