History
The Aryan race is mentioned in Old Persian sources from around 500 BC onwards. The word Iran itself means 'the Land of Aryans.' Indians and Iranians consider themselves Aryan. In 19th century Europe the meaning of the term Aryan was distorted after the discovery of the Indo-European language family. It gave rise to the theory that all white Europeans descended from an ancient people called the Aryans.
Persia first grabbed the attention of the historic world in the sixth century BCE with the exploits and conquests of the near-legendary Cyrus the Great, conqueror of the Medes, and of his successors Darius and Xerxes, so strikingly described in the renowned fifth century BCE classical Greek works of the historians Herodotus and Xenophon. Powerful rulers dominated the Iranian world and influenced the great ancient cultures that surrounded it, until the native dynasties succumbed to the unrelenting push of Islam in the early seventh century CE. Persian culture and society were then fundamentally altered, yet the interplay between the older era and the Islamic era yielded a new, uniquely Iranian amalgamation.The growth of a new and strong dynasty under the Azerbaijani Safavids (CE 1501-1736), with the backing of Anatolian and Syrian Turkomen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the importance of Iran to European mercantile interests, especially under the British East India Company, explained the growth of materials about Iran and the countries held within its empire. The foreign relationships that arose in that era with the Ottoman Empire and Russia to the north and the European countries of the west, continued their influence in Iran right into the twenty first century.
Modern Iranian history began with a nationalist uprising against the Shah in 1905 and the establishment of a limited constitutional monarchy in 1906. The discovery of oil in 1908 would later become a key factor in Iranian history and development. In 1921, Reza Khan, an Iranian officer of the Persian Cossack Brigade, seized control of the government. In 1925, having ousted the Qajar dynasty, he made himself Shah and established the Pahlavi dynasty, ruling as Reza Shah for almost 16 years.
Reza Shah forcibly enacted policies of modernization and secularization in Iran, and the central government reasserted its authority over the tribes and provinces. During World War Two the Allies feared the monarch's close relations with Nazi Germany. In September 1941, following the occupation of western Iran by the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, Reza Shah was forced to abdicate. His son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, became Shah and would rule until 1979.
During World War Two, Iran had been a vital link in the Allied supply line for lend-lease supplies to the Soviet Union. After the war, Soviet troops stationed in northwestern Iran not only refused to withdraw but backed revolts that established short-lived, pro-Soviet separatist regimes in the northern regions of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. These ended in 1946. The Azerbaijani revolt crumbled after U.S. and United Nations (UN) pressure forced a Soviet withdrawal. Iranian forces also suppressed the Kurdish uprising.
In 1951, the government of nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq (sometimes spelled Mossadegh) nationalized the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). In the face of strong public support for Mossadeq, the Shah fled to Rome. In August 1953, the U.S. and U.K. engineered a coup against Mossadeq, during which pro-Shah army forces arrested the Prime Minister. The Shah returned soon thereafter.
In 1961, Iran administered a series of economic, social, and administrative reforms--pushed by the Kennedy administration--that became known as the Shah's White Revolution. The core of this program was land reform. Modernization and economic growth proceeded at an unprecedented rate, fueled by Iran's vast petroleum reserves, the third-largest in the world. However, his autocratic method of rule and pro-western policies alienated large sectors of the population, including the Shia clergy.
In 1978, domestic turmoil turned to revolution as a result of religious and political opposition to the Shah's rule, including abuses committed by SAVAK, the hated internal security and intelligence service. The revolution was comprised of several groups, including nationalists, Islamists, Marxists, and others who came together to oppose the Shah. In January 1979, the Shah left Iran; he died abroad several years after.
On February 1, 1979, exiled religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from France to assume control of the revolution and established himself as Supreme Leader of a new, theocratic republic guided by Islamic principles. Following Khomeini's death on June 3, 1989, the Assembly of Experts chose the outgoing president of the republic, Ali Khamenei, to be his successor as Supreme Leader in what proved to be a smooth transition externally. There was debate amongst senior clerics regarding Khamenei's relative lack of religious credentials.
The 1979 Islamic revolution and the 1980-88 war with Iraq transformed Iran's class structure politically, socially, and economically. During this period, Shia clerics took a more dominant position in politics and nearly all aspects of Iranian life, both urban and rural. After the fall of the Pahlavi regime in 1979, much of the urban upper class of prominent merchants, industrialists, and professionals, favored by the former monarch, the shah, lost standing and influence to the senior clergy and their supporters. Bazaar merchants, who were allied with the clergy against the Pahlavi shahs, also have gained political and economic power since the revolution. The urban working class has enjoyed somewhat enhanced status and economic mobility, spurred in part by opportunities provided by revolutionary organizations and the government bureaucracy. Though the number of clergy holding senior positions in the parliament and elsewhere in government has declined since the 1979 revolution, Iran has nevertheless witnessed the rise of a post-revolutionary elite among lay people who are strongly committed to the preservation of the Islamic Republic.
