history of Iran

…the coterminous region of southeastern Iran. This geographic region is the least-developed in Iran, partially owing to its harsh physical conditions. Precipitation, which is scarce and falls mostly in violent rainstorms, causes floods and heavy erosion, while heat is oppressive for eight months of the year. The mountain chains of…

…medical treatises were translated into Persian, and Persian miniature painting in the 13th and 14th centuries shows many influences of Chinese art. Chinese-type administration and chancellery practices were adopted by various Mongol dominions in Central Asia and the Middle East. It has even been suggested that the invention of gunpowder…

…of Arabs, Turks, and particularly Persians began to immigrate to the Deccan, many of them at the invitation of Sultan Muḥammad I, and there they had a strong influence on the development of Muslim culture during subsequent generations. The new settlers (āfāqīs) also had a political effect, as they soon…

…consolidating the Mongol hold on Iran. In 1258 Hülegü occupied Baghdad and put an end to the Abbasid caliphate. He laid the foundations of a Mongol state in Iran, known as the Il-Khanate (because the il-khan was subordinate to the great khan in faraway Mongolia or China), which embraced, in…

Süleyman waged three major campaigns against Persia. The first (1534–35) gave the Ottomans control over the region of Erzurum in eastern Asia Minor and also witnessed the Ottoman conquest of Iraq, a success that rounded off the achievements of Selim I. The second campaign…

5 million had fled to Iran. The mujahideen were eventually able to neutralize Soviet air power through the use of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles supplied by the Soviet Union’s Cold War adversary, the United States.

The Persians captured Muscat in 1743. The Yaʿrubids dissolved into dynastic dispute, and a leader named Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd set to liberating Oman from the Persians. He became imam in 1749, founding the Āl Bū Saʿīd dynasty. This period in Oman is marked by the crystallization…

in the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Iran struck an answering chord with Shiʿis and Iranian workers in the Arabian states, which gave financial support to Iraq. U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his successor in 1981, Ronald Reagan, pledged American support to keep open the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 60…

…describe the bellicose tendencies of Iran, North Korea, and Iraq in the early 21st century. The phrase was coined by Canadian-born U.S. presidential speechwriter David Frum and presidential aide Michael Gerson for use by U.S. President George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address, when

…East that are supported by Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In addition to the IRGC, the axis comprises Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, certain militias in Iraq, and

…they continued to develop under Persian social and cultural influence. Persian-ruled khanates in Shirvan (Şamaxı), Baku, Ganja (Gäncä), Karabakh, and Yerevan dominated this frontier of Ṣafavid Iran.

Iran’s ties to the country’s Shiʿi community, its territorial claims to the island, and its displeasure with the American presence in Bahrain have helped to strain relations between it and Bahrain. Resolution in 2001 of the dispute between Bahrain and Qatar over the Ḥawār Islands…

…Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran that enlists civilian volunteers who are motivated by zealotry and devotion to the Islamic Republic. Members require less training than those in more regular divisions and are easily mobilized, and so they are often the first of the armed forces to respond to unrest.…

…1979 and composed of Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. Until March 1959 the organization was known as the Middle East Treaty Organization, included Iraq, and had its headquarters in Baghdad.

…afterward, Shah Ismāʿīl I of Iran (Persia) invaded Kartli. Ivan IV (the Terrible) and other Muscovite tsars showed interest in the little Christian kingdoms of Georgia, but the Russians were powerless to stop the Muslim powers—Ṣavafid Iran and the Ottoman Empire, both near their zenith—from partitioning the country and oppressing…

…the governments of Syria and Iran, two of its primary sources of support, were strained in 2011 when Meshaal and other Hamas figures in Damascus conspicuously avoided expressing support for a crackdown by Syrian armed forces against anti-government protesters inside the country. In early 2012 Hamas leaders left Syria for…

Prior to the Islamic revolution of 1978–79 in Iran, SAVAK (Organization of National Security and Information), the Iranian secret police and intelligence service, protected the regime of the shah by arresting, torturing, and executing many dissidents. After the shah’s government fell, SAVAK and other…

…revolutionary regime change in 1979, Iran and Nicaragua. In Iran, Islamic fundamentalists led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had adopted a militantly anti-U.S. posture after toppling the pro-Western government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. In Nicaragua, the leftist Sandinistas had taken power from Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The

…(1980–88), prolonged military conflict between Iran and Iraq during the 1980s. The incredibly deadly and destructive nature of the conflict left a long legacy, including the proliferation in the development of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Iran. The war placed tremendous strain on the countries’ resources, a factor…

…Strip was between Israel and Iran in April 2024. Israeli warplanes struck Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus, killing, among others, senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, which was providing aid, support, and training for the Iran-led axis. Two weeks later, in a retaliation that Politico Magazine…

Iran attacked a Kuwaiti refinery complex in 1981, which inspired subsequent acts of sabotage in 1983 and 1986. In 1985 a member of the underground pro-Iranian Iraqi radical group al-Daʿwah attempted to assassinate the Kuwaiti ruler, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah.

…he fled (July 1543) to Iran to seek military assistance from its ruler, the Ṣafavid Shah Ṭahmāsp I. The shah agreed to assist him with an army on the condition that Humāyūn become a Shiʿi Muslim and return Kandahār, an important frontier town and commercial center, to Iran in the…

…to the Safavid shahs of Iran. After serving under a local chieftain, Nadr formed and led a band of robbers, showing marked powers of leadership. In 1726, as head of this group of bandits, he led 5,000 followers in support of the Safavid shah Ṭahmāsp II, who was seeking to…

…appeal to conquer most of Iran. Under the shah Ismāʿīl I (ruled 1501–24), the Safavids sent missionaries throughout Anatolia, spreading a message of religious heresy and political revolt not only among the tribal peoples but also to cultivators and some urban elements, who began to see in that movement the…

…able to retake Iraq (1638), Iran remained a major threat. Finally, a long war with Venice (1645–69), occasioned by Ottoman efforts to capture Crete, exposed Istanbul to a major Venetian naval attack. Although the Venetians finally were pushed back in a naval campaign culminating in the Ottoman conquest of Crete…

…Brigade, cavalry unit founded in Iran in 1879 and modeled after Russian Cossack formations. It began as a regiment and was enlarged within a few months to a brigade and later, during World War I, into a division.

Even during the second half of the Northern War, Peter had sent exploratory missions to the East—to the Central Asian steppes in 1714, to the Caspian region in 1715, and to Khiva in 1717. The end of the war left him free…

Persian nationalists had challenged the shah and Anglo-Russian influence before 1914 and flirted with the Young Turks (hence with Germany) during the war. By August 1919, however, British forces had contained both domestic protest and an ephemeral Bolshevik incursion and won a treaty from Tehrān…

…by both Ras al-Khaimah and Iran. On November 30, 1971, Iranian troops landed on Greater Ṭunb and met armed resistance from Ras al-Khaimah police. Iran, however, remained in possession of the islands. The incident was a significant factor in convincing the emirate’s leaders that Ras al-Khaimah would benefit from unity,…

…Treaty of Gulistan in 1813, Persia ceded to Russia a wide area of the khanates of the eastern Caucasus, from Länkäran northward to Derbent. Russia had little difficulty in acquiring by conquest from Persia in 1828 a stretch of the northern Armenian plateau, including the entire plain of Yerevan, and…

…over regional security turned to Iran, which, since the Islamic revolution, had purportedly sought to export the revolution to other countries in the region with significant Shiʿi populations, such as Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. In strongly opposing Iran, the Saudi government also followed the U.S. policy of “dual…

Prior to independence, Iran asserted its claim to the Sharjah island of Abū Mūsā, in the open gulf northwest of Sharjah town, and landed troops there. A subsequent agreement between Iran and Sharjah promised that both flags would fly over the island, settled the question of possible future…

allies Russia and Iran continued to object, calling for the Syrian government to be given more time to deal with internal unrest. In October, Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian crackdown, effectively blocking the path to UN sanctions or a UN-approved military…

…continued to receive weapons from Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. By late 2012 Hezbollah had also begun sending its own fighters into Syria to battle the rebels.

…the culture and people of Iran; the Tajik and Persian languages are closely related and mutually intelligible. The Tajiks’ centuries-old economic symbiosis with oasis-dwelling Uzbeks also somewhat confuses the expression of a distinctive Tajik national identity. Since the early years of independence, Tajikistan has been wracked by conflict between the…

On Iran, which Allied forces were partly occupying, they were able to agree on a declaration (published on December 1, 1943) guaranteeing the postwar independence and territorial integrity of that state and promising postwar economic assistance.

… conducted a major operation against Iran. The anticipated attack, which targeted nuclear facilities, military sites, and regime infrastructure, followed nearly two years of war between Israel and Iran-backed militant groups that also saw two direct confrontations between Israel and Iran in 2024. As fighting increased on both sides, the United…

…point in the history of Iran’s Islamic Republic. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979 the new government billed itself as democratic, but in the 1980s a conservative faction of Shiʿi Muslim clerics, led especially by the hawkish revolutionary figure Ali Khamenei, used the instability in Iran and the existential Iran-Iraq…

…Iran war, conflict centered on Iran that was initiated by the United States and Israel on February 28, 2026, and has upended the dynamics of the Middle East. The opening salvo took out the heart of the Iranian regime, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and triggered a torrent of hundreds of

United States and Iran has been volatile over the last 80 years is to master the art of understatement.

…which had meanwhile invaded neutral Persia’s part of Azerbaijan and taken Tabriz on January 14, were expelled by a Russian counterinvasion in March.

…outset of World War II Iran was pro-German, and in August 1941 the Soviet Union and Britain jointly occupied the country, which then became the main supply line connecting the Soviet Union with the Western Allies. In 1942, in a three-power treaty, both Britain and the Soviet Union promised to…

…and Soviet forces jointly invaded Iran, to forestall the establishment of a German base there and to divide the country into spheres of occupation for the duration of the war; and late in September—at a conference in Moscow—Soviet, British, and U.S. representatives formulated the monthly quantities of supplies, including aircraft,…