In the Middle East, Islam is the dominant religion. Islam’s followers, Muslims, worship in mosques, like the one in Iran shown here. The women in the foreground have their heads covered, as required by Islamic law in Iran. In most other countries, Muslim women can choose whether to wear a veil or head cover.
Credit: © Patrick Ben Luke Syder, Lonely Planet Images

In September 2022, public protests broke out in dozens of Iranian cities following the death in police custody of a 22-year-old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini. On September 13, Amini had been arrested in Tehran by officers of Iran’s morality police, who enforce the nation’s strict dress code. The police arrested Amini for incorrectly wearing her hijab, the traditional headscarf worn by Muslim women. Though many Muslim women choose to wear the hijab, wearing one is required by law in Iran. Amini died in police custody on September 16. In the protests that followed, some women burned their headscarves. Women in Iran and around the world cut their hair in protest.

According to human rights groups, thousands of protesters were arrested, more than 185 people were killed, and hundreds more were injured. The authorities stated they would investigate the civilian deaths and claimed violence was caused by dissident groups. The government restricted access to the internet and social media as part of an attempt to end the protests. In response to the government’s actions, some global powers have imposed sanctions on Iran.

The protests persisted into October. Deaths of other protestors added fuel and heartache to those protesting the regime. Those included Iranian teenage girls who shared their lives and talents on social media. Nika Shakarami, a 16-year-old Iranian student, died during the protests. Iranian authorities claim Shakarami died by falling from a building. Her mother, Nasreen, said that the body was buried without the family’s consent, and records showed severe damage to her skull. Sarina Esmaeilzadeh was 16 years old and joined the protests on September 22. It was reported that she was beaten by Iranian forces and died of her wounds, although that has been denied by authorities, which claim she died by suicide.

This challenge to authorities is one of the greatest in Iran since the 1979 revolution. In 1979, revolutionaries under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Muslim religious leader, overthrew Mohammad Reza. The revolutionaries took control of Iran. They changed Iran’s government from a constitutional monarchy to an Islamic republic. Their policies led to strict Islamic control over all areas of people’s lives. Their rule resulted in severe economic problems for the nation. Relations between Iran and Western countries became strained.

November 4, 2019

Forty years ago today, on Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian revolutionaries seized the United States Embassy in Tehran, Iran’s capital, and took 66 Americans hostage. Islamic revolutionaries had taken control of Iran’s government earlier in the year. The revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy after Iran’s former shah (king), Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was admitted into the United States. The revolutionaries wanted the shah returned to Iran to stand trial for crimes allegedly committed during his rule. The shah was not returned, and he died during the crisis. 

Blindfolded American hostages are paraded inside the U.S.
Embassy compound on Nov. 4, 1979. Credit: © Bettmann/Getty Images

The United States and other countries denounced the seizure of the U.S. Embassy as a violation of international law and demanded that the hostages be freed. Thirteen hostages—women and African Americans—were freed within weeks, but the rest (except for one released due to illness) were kept for more than a year. The United States placed harsh economic sanctions on Iran, and after a failed rescue attempt, the death of the shah, and lengthy negotiations, the hostages were at last released on Jan. 20, 1981. 

The Iran hostage crisis ended diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States. Images of the bound and blindfolded hostages dominated media coverage during the 444-day event. For a more detailed account of the international incident, see the World Book article Iran hostage crisis.

July 16, 2018

Persian, the official language of Iran, is called Farsi by its native Iranian speakers. The word Persian is often used by people outside of Iran to refer to this language. Accordingly, the word Persia itself comes from an outsider’s name (the Greek word Persis) for the historical Iranian region. The Persian language is written in a slightly modified Arabic script. The word Farsi looks like this: فارسی.

The Iranian flag flies over more than 80 million Farsi speakers. The inscription God Is Greatest appears in stylized Arabic 11 times on both the green stripe and the red stripe of the flag. The white stripe bears the coat of arms, which is the word Allah. Credit: © Grebeshkov Maxim, Shutterstock

Ancient Persia was centered in part of what is now the countries of Iran and Afghanistan. Thousands of years ago, the Persian Empire came to rule most of southwestern Asia and parts of Europe and Africa. The ancient Persians spoke a language they called Aryan (now usually called Old Persian). Aryan is also the name of Iran’s dominant ethnic group. Indeed, the name Iran means Land of the Aryans. About 2,500 years ago, Old Persian was first written in the Cuneiform script. By about A.D. 250, Persian scribes were using an Aramaic script. By A.D. 400, the people spoke Middle Persian, or Pahlavi. Scholars developed an advanced alphabet of 48 letters, each representing a different sound. In the mid-600’s, however, Muslim Arabs conquered what is now Iran and imposed their religion and form of writing.

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Iran. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Modern Persian belongs to the extensive Indo-European family of languages, to which belong nearly all the languages of Europe and many of the languages of southern and southwestern Asia. The commonalities of such languages become apparent in the origins of a number of words. For example, the English word mother is madre in Spanish and madder in Persian. Many similarities also exist between Old Persian and Sanskrit, the mother tongue of many modern languages of India. Persian shares much vocabulary with Arabic. Many modern and technical Persian terms are taken from English, French, and German.

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Persian, or Farsi, is one of many Indo-European languages. Credit: WORLD BOOK diagram

The modern Persian alphabet has 32 letters, including 4 symbols that represent sounds not heard in Arabic. Like Arabic, Hebrew, and Urdu, Persian is written from right to left. Sentences are formed with a subject-object-verb structure. Verbs frequently appear as the last word in a sentence.

Though the Persian language uses Arabic script, there is no p sound in Arabic. The influence of Arabic rendered Persian p’s as f’s. Accordingly, the southwestern Iranian province of Pars—historically a center of Persian culture and learning—became rendered as Fars. The Iranian language was named for its origins in Pars, and the name Parsi was Arabicized as Farsi.

Today, Persian has a number of dialects—that is, distinct forms of the language spoken by certain population groups. Farsi—the official language of Iran—is the most widely spoken dialect. Persian dialects are also spoken in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and parts of other southwestern Asian countries. Persian is also spoken in the United States, where Los Angeles in particular is a hub for Persian speakers. The Dari language in Afghanistan is quite similar to Persian and is understood in Iran. In Tajikistan, the people speak a variety of Persian called Tajik or Tajiki.

Linguists consider Persian not terribly difficult to learn. For instance, it has no articles (such as a, an, or the in English), and its nouns have no gender. However, it can take lots of practice to master the language’s frequent use of guttural (throat-formed) sounds, such as gh and kh. Speakers of Persian consider their language to be a sweet-sounding one that lends itself to song and recitations of poetry.

A number of Persian or Persian-influenced words are part of an English speaker’s everyday vocabulary, particularly when it comes to food. These words include candy, lemon, pistachio, saffron, soup, and spinach. New students of the Persian language may chuckle upon learning that barf falls from the sky in the mountains above Tehran! But the word simply means snow.

January 4, 2016

Today, Bahrain and Sudan joined Saudi Arabia in breaking off diplomatic ties with Iran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations with Iran. Saudi Arabia severed relations with Iran on Sunday after an angry mob stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, the Iranian capital. The spark behind this latest row between long-time rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran was the execution of Shī`ite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr on terrorism charges in Saudi Arabia on Saturday. The people of Saudi Arabia are predominantly Sunni Muslims, and Shī`ite Muslims around the world condemned the cleric’s execution as motivated purely by sectarianism (prejudice in favor of one’s own sect).

Middle East Map. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Differences between Shī`ite and Sunni Muslims have resulted in violence in the Middle East for centuries. Iran is the largest—but also one of the few—Shī`ite-dominated countries. As such, it is often at odds with the Sunni-controlled countries that make up the majority of the Muslim world. Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 for playing a central part in protests against the Saudi government. However, he claimed never to have advocated violence or terrorism. Saturday’s execution in Saudi Arabia also included 3 other Saudi Shī`ites, as well as 43 Sunnis accused of working with Al-Qa`ida.

Other World Book articles: 

•  Islam (2009) – A Back in Time article
• Middle East (2012) – A Back in Time article
• Saudi Arabia (2012) – A Back in Time article

July 16, 2015

On Tuesday, July 14, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear program in return for relief from international sanctions. The landmark agreement followed months of intense negotiations (and years of difficult diplomacy) between Iran and the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The global goal of the agreement—to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon—was reached, as was Iran’s goal, the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.

Iran first bragged about its newly achieved nuclear capabilities in 2002, raising alarms around the world—specifically with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA is the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations (UN). Iran claimed their atomic aim was peaceful (the creation of electric power, for instance), but international doubt forced economic sanctions on Iran until the nation could prove its good intentions. Decades of Islamic extremism, petroleum maneuvering, and general belligerence toward the Western world had isolated Iran. The Iranian and U.S. governments have not had regular diplomatic relations since the hostage crisis that began in 1979. The United States and many other countries—France, Germany, and the United Kingdom included—consider Iran a “rogue nation”—that is, a nation that ignores international law and supports terrorism.

A few recent major events brought Iran and the United States (the nation Iran tends to target most often in speeches) closer to a truce. First was the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. After years of U.S. diplomatic poison, Obama’s corps began sending reconciliatory feelers Iran’s way. Those feelers went largely ignored until February 2013, when Iran’s economic malaise finally brought them to the negotiating table in secret. Those opening talks—revealed months later—were part of a larger liberal ground swell in Iran that led to the election in June 2013 of President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate cleric (religious leader) and—crucially—a former Iranian representative and negotiator with the IAEA. In November, just three months after Rouhani took office, Iran and the West made their relationship public with the announcement of a tentative nuclear agreement. This “promise to promise” lifted the first series of economic sanctions on Iran.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in September 2013. © Mike Segar, Reuters/Landov

In March 2014, very public negotiations began between Iran and the “P5+1,” the permanent members of the UN Security Council: the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom + Germany. The P5+1 aren’t all the best of friends, but they all acknowledged that an agreement with Iran was in the world’s best interest. So they put differences aside—with Iran and with each other—and reached this monumental diplomatic agreement. The devil is in the details, of course, and time will tell if the deal lives up to its hype, but it is without question a giant step in the right direction.

There is an important aside to all this new-found friendship: the cataclysmic 2014 emergence of the terrorist group, the Islamic State—also called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), among other things. Iraq and Syria are next door to Iran, and the Islamic State threat has brought Iranian and U.S. military people together on the ground. It took real terror (not supposed or potential or imagined) to make that happen.

January 22, 2015

Speaker of the House of Representatives John A. Boehner yesterday invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress on February 11. Political analysts suggested that the invitation, which Netanyahu accepted, is part of a growing showdown between Republicans and President Barack Obama over proposals to tighten sanctions against Iran. Iran, the United States, and other world powers are in negotiations over possible controls and monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program, including levels of uranium enrichment. Despite these talks, Israel, according to a number of military experts, is preparing for air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

In his State of the Union address to Congress on January 20, President Obama appealed to the Republican-controlled House and Senate to hold off on any additional sanctions against Iran while diplomatic talks continue over possible ways to limit Iran’s nuclear program. [New sanctions] “will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails, alienating America from its allies and ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again,” the president stated in his address.

Speaking to Republican lawmakers yesterday, Boehner noted that he hoped Netanyahu would speak on the threat radical Islam and Iran pose to U.S. security. “He [President Obama] expects us to stand idly by and do nothing while he cuts a bad deal with Iran,” said Boehner.

Today, a White House spokesperson informed the media that President Obama would not meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu upon his arrival in February.

Additional World Book article:

• Nuclear weapon

September 8, 2014

U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking yesterday on the Sunday morning television news program “Meet the Press,” declared, “What I want people to understand is that over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)]. We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities; we’re going to shrink the territory that they control; and, ultimately, we’re going to defeat them. On Friday, at a press conference to mark the end of a two-day summit of NATO member-state leaders, the president declared that he found “conviction” among U.S. allies that the international community must “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. “What we can accomplish is to dismantle this network, this force that has claimed to control this much territory, so that they can’t do us harm and that is going to be our objective.”

In recent months, ISIS has taken control over great swathes of northern and western Iraq and eastern Syria. In late June, ISIS declared that it was establishing a caliphate on the territories it controls to be known simply as “the Islamic State,” which will extend from Aleppo in northern Syria to Diyala province in eastern Iraq.

President Obama is scheduled to give a speech on September 10 in which he will reveal his full strategy to combat the radical Sunni jihadists. A chief element of that strategy is to line up a coalition of Arab nations to help in the fight, and yesterday at a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, the League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi urged member nations to confront ISIS on all possible levels. What is required is a “clear and firm decision for a comprehensive confrontation” with “cancerous and terrorist” groups, al-Arabi told the meeting of foreign ministers.

On September 5, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States has formed a coalition with nine allies–largely European members of NATO–to carry out both a military and political campaign against ISIS. Secretary Kerry stated that the multinational alliance has “the ability to destroy” the militants using tactics beyond the battlefield, including disrupting recruiting and fund-raising networks. “It may take a year, it may take two years, it may take three years. But we’re determined. It has to happen,” stated Secretary Kerry.

Also on September 5, the BBC reported that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, approved co-operation with the United States as part of an international response to ISIS. The ayatollah has authorized his top army commander to co-ordinate operations in Iraq with the U.S. military. Although the Iranian government has long been antagonistic toward the United States, Iran considers ISIS a grave threat. The extremist Sunni group considers all Shi`ite Mulims as heretics, and Iran, a theocracy, is governed by Shi`ite clerics.

Additional World Book articles:

• Umayyad caliphate
• Iraq War
• Iraq 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Iraq 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria: The Roots of a Rebellion (a special report)

June 18, 2014

As much as 75 percent of Iraq’s enormous Baiji oil refinery, 130 miles (210 kilometers) north of Baghdad, reportedly fell to Sunni militants this morning. Forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) had surrounded the refinery for the past week, battling with a battalion of the Iraqi army that that was backed by helicopter gunships. The Baiji refinery is the largest in Iraq. Its capture deprives the Iraq government of an important source of fuel and provides the insurgents with a potentially lucrative source of income. Besides the refinery, the Baiji complex includes a 600-megawatt power plant, which supplies electric power to much of northern Iraq.

On June 16, ISIS militants seized the small city of Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. Responding to the situation, the United States Department of Defense ordered the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier, accompanied by two warships, to the Persian Gulf.

U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry (U.S. Senate)

President Hassan Rouhani of Iran. (The Office of Hassan Rouhani)

In Washington, D.C., on Monday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry stated that the United States was open to working with Iran to help stop the insurgents’ advances in Iraq. In Tehran, the Iranian capital, President Hassan Rouhani declared that his government would not rule out working with the United States to try to stabilize Iraq: “We have said that all countries must unite in combating terrorism.” Iran, a close ally of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shi`ite-led government, has reportedly sent members of the Revolutionary Guards, an elite military force, into Iraq to help al-Maliki fight the Sunni militants.

Additional World Book articles:

• Iraq War
• Kurdistan
• Iraq 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Iraq 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria 2013 (a Back in Time article)

November 24, 2013

United States Secretary of State John Kerry has announced that Iran and the international community have reached a deal on Iran’s nuclear program, claiming it will make Israel and the Middle East a safer place. Secretary Kerry characterizes the pact as “a first step in making sure Iran could not have nuclear weapons.”

Iran has agreed, for a limited period, to curb some of its nuclear activities in return for the lifting of some international economic sanctions. Iran has also agreed to stop enriching (concentrating) uranium to create material with more than 5-percent U-235 and to dilute (weaken) much of its existing stores of 20-percent U-235 to 5 percent. Natural uranium contains 0.7 percent of an isotope of uranium known as U-235. U-235 is the only natural isotope of uranium whose nucleus (core) can easily be made to undergo fission—that is, to split into two nearly equal parts. The fission process releases the nuclear energy used in power plants and weapons. Most nuclear reactors at power plants in the United States use fuel that contains about 2- to 4-percent U-235. Nuclear weapons and the reactors for nuclear-powered ships require uranium with concentrations of about 90-percent U-235.

The agreement bars Iran from adding new centrifuges and capping or, in some cases, eliminating, stockpiles of uranium. (Centrifuges are rapidly spinning tubes used to enrich uranium.) In addition, Iran promised to open its nuclear facilities to unprecedented “daily” inspections.

The deal was condemned by the government of Israel as a “historic mistake” that rewards Iran while getting nothing in return. (Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeatedly vowed that Iran would “eliminate the Zionist regime,” referring to Israel.)

International affairs experts suggest that the agreement, in fact, presents President Barack Obama with the opportunity to steer a new American course in the Middle East for the first time since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. They point out that after 34 years of estrangement, the United States and Iran have signed a diplomatic accord that opens the door to further progress. “No matter what you think of it, this is a historic deal,” stated Vali R. Nasr–dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies–in an interview with The New York Times. “It is a major seismic shift in the region. It rearranges the entire chess board.”

April 16, 2013

Iran was hit by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake this morning, its most powerful quake in nearly 40 years. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the epicenter was  near the city of Khash, in southeast Iran close to the Pakistani border. It occurred at a depth of 60 miles (96 kilometers). The earthquake was felt throughout the Middle East. The tremors were strong enough in Karachi, Pakistan, and New Delhi, India, for offices to be evacuated.

An earthquake occurs when Earth's rock suddenly breaks and shifts, releasing energy in vibrations called seismic waves. The point on Earth where the rock first breaks is called the focus. The point on the surface above is known as the epicenter. (World Book illustration)

There are conflicting reports on casualties. The Iranian Crisis Center in Tehran, the capital, claims there were no fatalities. However, an unnamed Iranian government official told Reuters news agency that there are 1,700 villages in the area with most of the buildings made of mud: “We are expecting hundreds of dead.” In Pakistan, local government officials report that the quake left at least five people dead in the town of Mashkel, which is near the border with Iran. In 2003, 30,000 people were killed when a 6.6-magnitude quake destroyed much of the city of Bam, in the same southeastern region of Iran.

Additional World Book articles:

• When the Earth Moves (a special report)
• Iran 2003 (a Back in Time article)