Iran A country Study Guide

Iran became an Islamic republic in 1979, when the monarchy was overthrown and clerics assumed political control under supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iranian revolution put an end to the rule of the Shah, who had alienated powerful religious, political and popular forces with a programme of modernization and Westernization coupled with heavy repression of dissent. Persia, as Iran was known before 1935, was one of the greatest empires of the ancient world, and the country has long maintained a distinct cultural identity within the Islamic world by retaining its own language and adhering to the Shia interpretation of Islam. Iran, which built its first atomic power station - at Bushehr, in the south of the country - with Russian help, insisted its nuclear ambitions were peaceful. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was president from 2005 to 2013, maintained that Iran had an “inalienable right” to produce nuclear fuel. Negotiations between Iran and six world powers - UN Security Council members US, UK, France, China and Russia, plus Germany - began in 2006 but did not produce an agreement until July 2015.