IRAN-ITS HISTORY & POLITICAL EVOLUTION.

 

Iran is quite a large country with about half the area of India but with a population of just 9.25 crores. It has borders with 7 countries; Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan of which 4; Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan & Afghanistan are major. Its nominal GDP for2025 was 357 Billion USD and the Per Capita was 4074 USD.

Iran is home to one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations with settlements dating back to 4000 BC. Iran was a part of the Assyrian state, and when that declined an Iranian state was established by the Medes in 612 BC.

The Achaemenids united all the Iranian tribes between 580 and 559 BC under Cambyses I. Under his son Cyrus II, also known as Cyrus the Great they defeated the Medes and established a unified Iranian state. By about 500 BC the Achaemenid empire stretched right from Turkey to Afghanistan and even into part of Egypt and also included parts of the Arabian peninsula and Central Asia.

This was the Persian Empire which was defeated by Alexander in 330 BC. After Alexander’s death his general Seleucus Nicator took control of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey and established the Seleucid dynasty. The Parthians challenged the Seleucid rule in Iran and wrested its control in 142 BC. Parthian power ended when Ardeshir II established the Sasanian empire in 224 AD. This dynasty ruled Iran and much of Middle east before the Muslims arrived on the scene in the 7^th century AD.

After the fall of the Sasanian Empire in 651, the Arabs of the Ummayed Caliphate (descendants of the first Caliph Omar) adopted many of the Persian customs. Arab provincial governors were mostly Persian.  Persian remained the court language of the Caliphate till about the end of the 7^th century AD when Arabic replaced it. However, entire Iran could not be brought under the Caliphate and the Daylam region and the Tabaristan region was under local kings who could not be subdued and together they defeated an Arab general.

Later anti Umayyad insurrections were supported by non-Arabic Islamic converts who were resentful as they were relegated to lower social standing. In one of these revolutions the Abbasids who were descendants of Mohammed’s uncle Abbas overthrew the Umayyad’s in 750 AD and established the Abbasid caliphate. The power of the Abbasids decreased by the 10^th century AD and there was an establishment of several independent Iranian dynasties.  

Then came the Seljuk Turks in the 11^th century AD and took over the Iranian region. The Seljuk Empire fractured in 1157 AD. The Islamization of Iran was a long process. The Muslim population of Iran was 40% in the mid-9^th century but it went up to 90% by the end of the 11^th century AD. Despite the Persians adopting the religion of their conquerors, they worked to protect and revive the Persian language and culture and Arabs and Turks participated in this process.

In the early 13^th century the Mongol hordes descended on the caliphate which finished off the Abbasid caliphate completely by 1258 AD. Later the Mongol Empire got fractured after the death of the Great Khan and the region including Iran fell to Hulegu Khan. There was a cultural renaissance and his descendant Ghazan Khan converted to Islam in the late 13^th century turning it away from the other Mongol khanates. After him, his nephew Abu Said became the Khan and when he died in 1335 AD, the Kingdom was fractured into several small kingdoms when black death arrived and killed 30% of Iran’s population. 

Timur  founded the Timurid dynasty in 1370 AD. He came from a Turkified tribe of Mongols. He invaded Iran in 1381 AD. He was most brutal and ordered the complete massacre of Isfahan killing 70,000 people. The Timurids ruled Iran till 1452 AD.

The Safavid Empire was founded by Shah Ismail in 1505 AD is considered as the beginning of the modern Iranian history. The dynasty unified Iran as a cohesive entity under Persian rule and as Shia Islam as the official religion. The Safavids ruled from 1501 AD to 1722 AD and had a brief restoration from 1729 to 1736. The Safavids ruled Iran with an iron hand in a despotic fashion.

The rival Asfaharid dynasty was established by Nadir Shah (1736-1747) & Zarid dynasty by Karim Khan( 1751-1777). Nadir Shah is described as the last great Asiatic military conqueror. His Empire at the maximum extent encompassed Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Oman, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, North Caucasus & the Persian Gulf. 

Although he sacked Delhi and looted the Peacock throne and the Kohinoor, India was not a part of his Empire because neither he nor his heirs ruled Delhi.  The Qazar dynasty took control of Iran in 1789 AD under Agha Mohammed Shah and unified Iran.  

In the 19^th century following the Russo Persian wars Iran lost significant amount of territory in the Caucasus to the Russian Empire. Britain then got involved in Southern Iran to counter the Russian presence in the North. This power struggle resulted in poor governance and culminated in the Great Persian Famine of 1870-71 which killed a significant portion of Iran’s population numbering millions.

In 1921 in a coup the Qajar dynasty was replaced by the Pahlavi dynasty founded by Reza Shah. He believed in an authoritarian government that valued nationalism, militarism, secularism and anti-communism with strict censorship and state propaganda.

Reza Shah introduced many socio economic reforms reorganising the army, government administration and finance. He ruled for 16 years before he was forced to abdicate by the Anglo Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 overwhelming the weak Iranian army.

His rein brought in law & order, discipline, central authority and modern amenities like schools, trains, buses, radios, cinemas and telephones. However, his rein was perceived as a corrupt police state with only outward modernization. Reza Shah was deposed by the Soviet  Anglo alliance and they replaced him with his son Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. From that time (1941 AD) onwards till the revolution in 1979, Iran was ruled as an autocracy under the Shah with strong American support.

Shah initiated economic, social, agrarian, and administrative reforms to modernize the country which became known as the White Revolution. Many Islamic leaders criticised those initiatives and the land reforms had mixed results.

By 1978 the Shah had become widely unpopular among the Iranian people. Daily demonstrations destabilised the region and the Shah established martial law to curb the opposition. When hundreds of thousands of protesters demonstrated, the security forces opened fire on the agitators in an incident that is known as Black Friday. In this incident about 100 protestors were killed and 200 injured by the army firing in Jaleh Square in Tehran.

The protests then grew and included 10% of the area of the country and involved 1% of its population. Anger with the Shah was so great that even secular and leftist groups supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution despite not sharing any of his ideas. Ultimately the Shah fled Iran and Khomeini who was then in exile was invited to come back. 

Khomeini on return claimed to support free democratic elections. On 31^st March 1979 a referendum was held in Iran seeking the people’s preference for an Islamic regime. The answer as per the official announcement was that a 97% yes. But no impartial observers from outside were allowed to oversee the elections, so despite it being a positive vote, it is very doubtful if it was actually 97% as stated. Anyway it is a yes for the theocratic regime due to the hatred of the people towards the Shah.  

The referendum mandated the creation of an assembly to draft a new theocratic constitution by which Khomeini became the Supreme leader in December 1979.  Industries were nationalised, laws and schools Islamized and Western influence was restricted.

In Sep 1980, the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein invaded Iran initiating the Iran-Iraq war. The war continued till 1988 when Khomeini accepted a truce mediated by the UN. The war killed 500,000 people and Saddam Hussein freely used chemical weapons against the Iranians.                

On his deathbed in 1989, Khomeini appointed a reform council which proclaimed Ali Khameini as his successor. President Rafsanjani concentrated on a pro business policy of rebuilding the economy. He supported free market favouring a privatization of state industries and took a moderate position internationally.  

In 1997 Rafsanjani was succeeded by the moderate Khatami as President who advocated freedom of expression, good diplomatic relations with Asia and the EU and a policy that supported free market and foreign investment.         

The year 2005, brought the hardliner Ahmadinejad to power as the President. He had hard line views on nuclearization, on relations with Israel and other countries.

In 2013 the centrist Rouhani was elected as President. He agreed to a Joint Comprehensive Plan in Vienna in 2015 between Iran & the P5+1 (UN Security Council + Germany) and the EU. The talks are about ending economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iran’s cap on enriching Uranium.

In 2018 Trump withdrew from the deal and new sanctions were proposed on Iran. In 2020 IRGC General Suleimani, the 2^nd most powerful man in Iran was assassinated by the US, and in retaliation Iran rained missiles on the US airbases in Iraq. On Jan 8 2020 the IRGC shot down an Ukrainian International Airlines flight killing 176 civilians.

Hardliner Ibrahim Raisi was elected President in 2021. During his term Iran enriched its Uranium further and joined SCO and BRICS.  In 2024 Raisi was killed in a copter crash and Pezeshkian got elected as the President.

The weakening of Iran’s key allies and proxies since 2023 has left Iran isolated. In 2025 Iran was rapidly advancing its nuclear program. Iran and the US entered into negotiations for a new nuclear agreement but nothing came out of it. 

In June 2025 IAEA found Iran non-compliant with regulations. Totally disregarding that, Iran then announced the launch of another nuclear enrichment facility. 

On 13^th June 2025 Israel launched strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities killing top members of Iran’s military leadership. Thereafter in June 2022 itself, the US struck Iran’s nuclear facilities and Iran attacked the US bases in Qatar. On 24^th June Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire on the insistence of the US.   

Since Dec 25 Iran has experienced mass demonstrations across many cities against the Islamic Republic due to frustration with the economic crisis. By Jan 13 some 12000 demonstrators have been killed by the regime after blacking out the internet.   

There was a regime change in 1979 when the regime killed only 100 people and I wonder what the people of Iran would do now when so many people have been killed.

A study of the economy of Iran clearly points out how detrimental to economic development the Islamic regime had been.

Under Shah the per capita income of Iran had been 344 USD in the year 1969, 10 years before the revolution. By 1979, the year of the revolution, this has gone up to 2352 USD. That means it has gone up by 683% in 10 years or 68% a year.

In contrast the Islamic regime started with a fair per capita of USD 2352 in 1979 and by the year 1989, 10 years after the revolution, it has actually come down to 2124 USD which means it declined by 10% in those 10 years decreasing about 1% each year.

On a long term average between 1989 and 2023 the per capita of Iran has gone up from 2352 in 1979 to 4465 USD in 2023. That is a growth of 90% in 34 years or about 2.5% per year. Clearly the Islamic rule has pushed Iran into an abyss and made the economic life of the people miserable. No doubt the sanctions on Iran badly affected its economic situation. However, that alone is not the sole contributing factor for the decline and the Government policies too are negative and affected it. 

Between the years 2014 and 2024, in 10 years Iran’s GDP has fallen from USD 460 billion to USD 437 billion.

When this sort of growth rate is there for a country and then it registers a huge fall in its currency rate coupled with 40% inflation, then it is disaster time for a country and its people. One can only pity all those people whose life had been made hell by the Islamic regime.

It is very convenient to push all the ills to sanctions, but how a country in such a precarious economic condition could fund militant groups outside the country and supply them with arms to fight Israel. So for that regime religion is much more important than people and people do not matter at all except for giving excuses. The regime wants to fool the people with lies and continue on their religious agenda.