Iranian History: From Elam to the Islamic Republic

Elam was an ancient country in southwestern Iran, roughly the modern region of Khuzestan, with Susa as its capital.²¹ Britannica says it was closely tied to Mesopotamia in late prehistoric times and later adopted the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform script, perhaps because of domination by the Akkadian dynasty (about 2334–2154 BCE).²¹ Its language has “no known ancient relatives and no modern descendants,” and its art and architecture drew heavily on Babylonia; the ziggurat at Choghā Zanbīl near Susa is Britannica’s “excellent example” of Elamite culture.²¹ Elam also had an unusual rule of succession: sovereignty passed through women, so a new ruler was always the “son of a sister” of someone in the older sovereign’s family.²¹

The Medes and the Persians. Britannica describes the Medes as an Indo-European people related to the Persians who entered northeastern Iran probably as early as the 17th century BCE.²² By the mid-9th century BCE the Medes and the Persians had become the dominant force on the Iranian plateau, the Medes at first the more important politically, and the Persians eventually settled in Fars, known as Persis.²³ UNESCO’s World Heritage List includes Tchogha Zanbil (inscribed 1979), Susa (2015) and Hegmataneh (2024) from this deep past.⁷

Back to contents

Cyrus II, later called Cyrus the Great, inherited the throne of Anshan in 559 BCE and defeated the Medes in 550.²³ He captured Croesus at Sardis, the Lydian capital, in 546 and marched into Babylon in 539, which carried Persian power to the borders of Egypt.²³ At its greatest extent the empire stretched from Egypt to the Indus River, from Gandhara in the east to Khwarezm and Armenia in the north, and west through parts of Greece. Britannica calls it the largest empire the world had yet seen.²³

How it was run. Darius I completed the organization of the empire into provinces called satrapies, initiated by Cyrus, and fixed the annual tribute due from each. He standardized coinage, weights and measures, developed land and sea routes and completed a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea.²³ The Achaemenids adopted a policy of tolerance toward conquered peoples, and Britannica says Cyrus conciliated local populations by supporting local customs and even sacrificing to local deities, and that on entering Babylon he seized the hands of the statue of the city god Marduk as a signal that he would rule as a Babylonian and not as a foreign conqueror.²⁴²³ UNESCO describes Pasargadae, Cyrus’s first capital, as the capital of “the first great multicultural empire in Western Asia” and says it is considered the first empire to respect the cultural diversity of its peoples.²⁵

Not an idyll. The same sources record the limits. Darius took more than a year of hard fighting (522–521 BCE) to put down revolts across the empire. His son Xerxes broke with the light hand of Cyrus and Darius, governing Egypt harshly and ignoring local customs, and suppressed a Babylonian revolt “with a heavy hand.”²³ Tolerance was a method of rule, not a modern ideal of equality.

Capitals and monuments. Darius I founded Persepolis in 518 BCE as the capital, on an immense half-artificial, half-natural terrace, with a palace complex inspired by Mesopotamian models.²⁶ At Bisotun, Darius ordered a relief and an inscription of about 1,200 lines in three languages, Elamite, Babylonian and, for the first time, Old Persian, telling of the rebellions he put down in 521–520 BCE.²⁷

The Greek wars. After Ionian Greek cities revolted in 499 BCE, Darius’s forces were defeated at Marathon in 490 BCE. Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 BCE, burning the Acropolis of Athens before losing at Salamis, and the invasion ended with the defeat at Plataea in 479 BCE.²³ Britannica adds that the Persians later used gold and diplomacy to play Greek states against each other, and that the “King’s Peace” of 387–386 BCE let Artaxerxes II dictate terms to the Greeks.²³ The wars were a contest between rival powers, not a simple clash of freedom and despotism.

End of the dynasty. The empire entered a slow decline after Xerxes’s death in 465 BCE. Alexander the Great defeated Darius III, Persepolis fell in April 330 BCE and Darius, the last Achaemenid, was murdered that summer.²³

The Cyrus Cylinder, and what it says 539 BCE

The Cyrus Cylinder is a fired-clay cylinder, about 22 cm long, found in Babylon in the 19th century and held by the British Museum. Its text, written in Babylonian script and language, records Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, says he entered the city without a fight, and describes him restoring temples and returning deported gods and peoples.²⁸

The museum is explicit about what it does not say. The cylinder is written “from a purely Babylonian point of view,” and the label “charter of human rights” is a modern one: “Such a concept would have been quite alien to Cyrus’s contemporaries, and indeed the cylinder says nothing of human rights.” But the museum also notes that returning deported peoples was “a significant reversal” of Assyrian and Babylonian policy.²⁸ Britannica adds that the accounts of Cyrus in Herodotus and Xenophon are legend-laden and that Xenophon’s portrait is of an ideal ruler, not a historical treatise.²⁴

Back to contents

After Alexander, one of his generals, Seleucus I Nicator, seized Babylonia in 312 BCE and founded the Seleucid empire, which at its greatest extent stretched from Thrace to the border of India.²⁹ Britannica says a Greek-speaking Macedonian aristocracy dominated the state, most strongly in cities, and it calls the empire a major centre of Hellenistic culture.²⁹ Rule in the east was thin: Parthia, Bactria and Sogdiana had won independence by the middle of the 3rd century BCE.²⁹

The Parthians. Iranica says Seleucus I conquered the eastern part of Iran after 308 BCE, but the Seleucids lost large parts of their Iranian possessions within about fifteen years, between 250 and 235 BCE, to the Parni, an Iranian tribe whose leader Arsaces gave his name to the Arsacid (Parthian) dynasty.³⁰ Ancient writers give conflicting accounts of Arsaces, and Britannica calls the traditional account “somewhat disputed.”³¹³² Parthia itself corresponds roughly to the modern region of Khorasan in northeastern Iran.³² Through the conquests of Mithradates I (reigned 171–138 BCE) and Artabanus II, all of the Iranian plateau and the Tigris–Euphrates valley came under Parthian control.³²

A decentralized empire. Britannica describes Parthia as feudal and decentralized, and says that although it was “perpetually menaced by hostile armies both in the east and in the west,” it never took a strong offensive after the time of Mithradates II.³² In 92 BCE Mithradates II concluded the first treaty between Parthia and Rome.³² Britannica argues that the later wars between the two powers were started by Rome, not Parthia: the triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus took the offensive in 54 BCE and was routed at Carrhae the following year, and the emperors Trajan (115–117 CE) and Septimius Severus (198) later penetrated deep into Parthian territory.³² Iranica adds that Roman forces sacked the capital Ctesiphon in 165 and 198, and that by the end the Arsacid empire was split between two rival brothers.³³ The Sasanian dynasty rose out of that decline: Iranica lists chronic civil strife, a devastating smallpox epidemic and repeated wars with Roman forces, along with the gradual ascendancy of a Persian family with religious and political bases of support.³³

Back to contents

The Sasanians, a Persian family from Fars, ruled from 224 to about 650 CE and were, in Iranica’s words, the last Persian lineage to achieve hegemony over much of Western Asia before Islam.³³ The word ērān (“of the Iranians”) is first attested in the titles of Ardashir I, and Shapur I’s inscription at the Ka‘ba-ye Zardosht in Fars contains, for the first time, the Persian word ērānšahr, “the Iranian realm,” for the empire.¹⁵ Iranica suggests that the royal family’s carvings at Persepolis may express a claim to Achaemenid heritage.³³

Rome and Byzantium. In 260 Shapur I trapped and captured the Roman emperor Valerian and his army of 70,000 near Carrhae; the captives were deported and settled on royal estates across Iran, and Sasanian rock reliefs, including at Naqsh-e Rostam, show Valerian standing with his wrist gripped by the victor.³³ In the early 7th century Khosrow II’s armies reached Chalcedon, opposite Constantinople, by 616.³³ Among the explanations Iranica lists for the empire’s fall is “the cost of the recent, long, and unsuccessful war with the Byzantines.”³⁴

Kings and nobles. Iranica says only Shapur II, Kavad I and Khosrow I succeeded in exercising absolute power; under other kings the magnates reasserted their influence, sometimes by deposing or killing kings.³³ The era was also when Zoroastrian priests codified the Avesta, the scriptures of the religion, long after the individual texts were composed,³⁵ and when one king’s tolerant religious policy let Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, preach freely.³³ UNESCO lists the Sassanid Archaeological Landscape of Fars Region (inscribed 2018).⁷

An afterlife as a model. Iranica says the Sasanian state remained “the ideal model of organization, splendor, and justice in Perso-Arab tradition,” and that its bureaucracy and royal ideology were imitated by the Abbasid, Ottoman and Safavid empires.³³

Back to contents

During the 7th and 8th centuries, mostly Arab armies of the early Islamic state conquered the Sasanian state and much of eastern Iran. Iranica cautions that the accounts are “often contradictory” and the exact course of events unclear, and says Persian forces appear to have outnumbered the Muslim armies at key battles such as Qadisiya and Nehavand and contested the advance fiercely.³⁴ By 651, most urban centers of Iranian lands had come under Arab domination, with the notable exceptions of the Caspian provinces and Transoxiana.³⁶ Yazdegerd III, the last Sasanian king, was enthroned in 632 as a youth after a succession crisis.³⁴

Conversion was gradual. Iranica says it was accompanied in places by violence: Zoroastrian scriptures were burned and priests executed. Zoroastrians were nevertheless treated as “people of the book,” which let many keep their religion; even in the 10th century some chose to migrate, and Iranica names them as the forebears of today’s Parsis in India. By the 9th century, Islam was dominant in Persia, though Fars still held many Zoroastrians.³⁶ Arabic words entered Persian, but Arabic did not replace Persian in everyday speech.³⁶

Persian came back. Britannica describes an Iranian cultural renaissance in the late 8th century that revived Persian literary culture, now in Arabic script and with many Arabic words, and native Persian Islamic dynasties began with the Tahirids in the early 9th century.³ Later, after the Seljuks defeated the Ghaznavids in 1038, they left the administration in Iranian hands; several Anatolian Seljuk rulers took Iranian names and made Persian the official language of court, an influence Iranica says spread as far as India.³⁷ The poetry of Ferdowsi, Sa’di and Hafez and the philosophy of Avicenna belong to this world; they are covered under Culture and legacy below so that no fact is told twice.

Back to contents

Iranica dates the Mongols’ presence in the Islamic world from Genghis Khan’s invasion in 1219.³⁸ In the 1250s Hülegü, the brother of the Great Khan Möngke, led an army that destroyed the Ismaili fortresses in the mountains south of the Caspian, culminating in the capture of Alamut on November 19, 1256.³⁹ Iranica adds that many scholars living at Alamut were spared, the most famous being Nasir al-Din Tusi, who became a trusted adviser to Hülegü.³⁹ UNESCO inscribed Alamut Castle and Related Fortifications in 2026.⁷

Baghdad and the Ilkhanate. Hülegü’s army took Baghdad on February 13, 1258, after a week of looting and massacre; the caliph was executed.³⁹ Iranica says the Abbasid caliphate was “virtually extinguished,” and that the Mamluks stopped the Mongol advance at Ayn Jalut on September 3, 1260.³⁸ Hülegü laid the groundwork for an almost independent Mongol state in Persia, centered on Azerbaijan, that lasted about three-quarters of a century.³⁹ On June 17, 1295, Ghazan Khan converted to Islam, which led to widespread conversion among the Mongols who had not yet converted; Iranica says he then moved against Buddhists, Christians and Jews, but later returned to a more tolerant attitude.⁴⁰

History written in Persian. The vizier Rashid al-Din composed the Jami’ al-tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles) between 1300 and 1310 at the request of the Ilkhans Ghazan and Öljeitü; it covers Islamic and Persian history and also the Mongols, Turks, Franks, Jews, Chinese and Indians, which is why it has been called the “first world history.”⁴¹

Timur and the Timurids. Britannica says that after Timur’s death in 1405 his conquests were divided, and between 1406 and 1417 his son Shah Rokh reunited most of them; under Shah Rokh (reigned 1405–47) Herat became the center of a renewed and artistically brilliant Persian culture.⁴² Miniature painting flourished at Shiraz, Tabriz and Herat, and Behzad was among the artists gathered at Herat.⁴² The last Timurid of Herat fell to the Uzbek Muhammad Shaybani in 1507.⁴²

Back to contents

The Safavids descended from Sheikh Safi al-Din (1253–1334) of Ardabil, head of a Sufi order that was originally Sunni but moved toward Shi‘ism over time.⁴³ In July 1501 Ismail I, with the backing of Kizilbash Turkmen tribes, captured Tabriz and was enthroned as shah, and over the next ten years he subjugated most of Iran and proclaimed Twelver Shi‘ism the state religion even though the territory was mostly Sunni.⁴³ Britannica says this establishment of Twelver Shi‘ism was a major factor in the emergence of a unified national consciousness among Iran’s many ethnic and linguistic groups, and that over the following centuries a Persian-based Shi‘i clergy produced a synthesis between Persian culture and Shi‘i Islam.⁴³³

Setback and recovery. In August 1514 Ismail was seriously defeated at Chaldiran by the Ottoman sultan Selim I; the struggle with the Ottomans in the west and the Uzbeks in the northeast went on to cost the Safavids Kurdistan, Diyarbakir and Baghdad.⁴³ Shah Abbas I (reigned from 1588) made peace with the Ottomans in 1590 on unfavorable terms, reformed the army around slave regiments, musketeers and artillerymen paid from the treasury, defeated the Ottomans in 1603 and captured Baghdad.⁴³ He also expelled the Portuguese traders who had seized the island of Hormuz, in 1602 and 1622,⁴³ a reminder that the Strait of Hormuz mattered long before today (see our Hormuz explainer).

Isfahan. Abbas moved the capital to Isfahan and made it the center of Safavid architecture, with the Masjed-e Shah, Masjed-e Sheikh Lotfollah, Ali Qapu, Chehel Sotun and the Maidan.⁴³ UNESCO calls the Meidan Emam an “impressive testimony to the level of social and cultural life in Persia during the Safavid era.”⁴⁴ Britannica notes that, despite Safavid Shi‘i zeal, Christians were tolerated and several missions and churches were built.⁴³

Decline. After Abbas died in 1629 the dynasty lasted about a century but, apart from the reign of Abbas II (1642–66), was a period of decline; Isfahan fell to the Ghilzai Afghans of Kandahar in 1722, and Shah Tahmasp II, who recovered it in 1729, was deposed in 1732 by his Afsharid lieutenant, the future Nadir Shah.⁴³

Back to contents

Nader Shah (1736–47). Born in 1688 into the Turkic Afshar tribe, Nadr Qoli Beg rose from obscurity, reformed Iran’s army, defeated the Ghilzai Afghans and restored Tahmasp II, then drove the Ottomans out of Azerbaijan and Iraq and in 1736 took the throne himself as Nader Shah.⁴⁵ In 1739 he defeated the Mughal army at Karnal and looted Delhi, taking the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-noor diamond.⁴⁵ Britannica’s verdict is mixed: he was a brilliant soldier but had little talent for administration; “tens of thousands of people perished” in his campaigns, tax collection ruined the economy, and he was assassinated by his own troops in 1747.⁴⁵

The Zands (1750–79). After Nader’s death, Karim Khan Zand became one of the contenders; by 1750 he proclaimed himself regent (vakil) for a Safavid figurehead and never claimed the title “king of kings.”⁴⁶ Britannica says his roughly 30 years of benevolent rule gave southern Iran “a much needed respite from continual warfare,” and that he encouraged agriculture and trade with Great Britain.⁴⁶ The last Zand, Lotf Ali Khan, was defeated and captured at Kerman in 1794.⁴⁶

The Qajars (1794–1925). Agha Mohammad Khan of the Turkmen Qajar tribe reunified Iran and was crowned shah in 1796.⁴⁷ His successor Fath Ali Shah was disastrously defeated by Russia in two wars (1804–13 and 1826–28) and lost Georgia, Armenia and northern Azerbaijan.⁴⁷ Britannica calls Naser al-Din Shah (reigned 1848–96) the ablest Qajar: Western science, technology and educational methods came to Iran and he played Britain and Russia against each other to preserve independence.⁴⁷

The Qajars and the clergy. Unlike the Safavids, who claimed descent from the seventh Shia imam, the Qajars had no religious lineage of their own to point to.⁴⁷ Historian Hamid Algar argues that Qajar shahs therefore took pains to cultivate the goodwill of the Shia ulama (the clergy), whose intercession for princes and ordinary people was “frequent and generally successful.”⁷³ In his reading, the leading clerics drew income from religious endowments (waqf), believers’ gifts and fees for judging cases, which gave them a base largely independent of the court.⁷³ A later study by Mansur Sefatgol finds that the Qajars kept the Safavid system of state-appointed religious offices, but that the most influential clerics stood “separate from the state” and acted as a counterweight to it.⁷⁴

The first popular protest. Iranica describes the 1891–92 protest over the Tobacco Régie, a foreign monopoly, as “the first sign of popular revolt against the prevailing order” and “almost a rehearsal” for the Constitutional Revolution, because it created an informal coalition of clerics, merchants and dissident intellectuals.⁴⁸

Back to contents

Iranica calls the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11 an “epoch-making episode in the modern history of Persia” whose aim was to replace arbitrary power with law, representative government and social justice and to resist imperial encroachment with nationalism, popular action and economic independence.⁴⁸ It was the first of its kind in the Islamic world, earlier than the Young Turk revolution of 1908.⁴⁸ Britannica says the weak Mozaffar al-Din Shah was forced in 1906 to grant a constitution curbing monarchical power.⁴⁷

Timeline. The Constitutional edict of August 5, 1906 authorized the First Majles, which convened in October; the constitution (the Fundamental Law) was adopted on December 27, 1906 and endorsed by Mozaffar al-Din Shah before his death on January 9, 1907.⁴⁸ His son Mohammad Ali Shah, aided by Russia, tried to abolish parliament in the coup of June 23, 1908, which began the “lesser tyranny”; resistance, led in Tabriz by figures such as Sattar Khan, restored the constitution on July 16, 1909, and Mohammad Ali was deposed.⁴⁸⁴⁷

A coalition with divisions. Iranica says the movement united merchants of the bazaar, reform-minded clergy such as Sayyed Mohammad Tabataba’i and Sayyed Abdollah Behbahani, and Western-oriented intellectuals.⁴⁸ Clerics were split: Sheikh Fazlollah Nuri argued for a system under the authority of Islamic jurists, while other senior clerics backed the constitution.⁴⁸ The Constitution’s supplement reflected the compromises, for example limiting equality before the law to “state laws” and making provision for a committee of five senior clerics to veto legislation incompatible with sharia (which the Majles never convened).⁴⁸

The end of the first phase. The Anglo-Russian pact of 1907 and the joint ultimatum of the two powers in November 1911, which led to the expulsion of the American financial adviser Morgan Shuster and the dissolution of the Second Majles in December 1911, put the new order in jeopardy.⁴⁸ Iranica adds that many Iranians then yearned for a strong leader, and that the revolution’s non-political aims, such as secular education, a centralized state and a judiciary independent of the clergy, set the agenda for Reza Shah’s reforms later.⁴⁸

Back to contents

On February 21, 1921, the officer Reza Khan occupied Tehran at the head of 1,200 men; in 1925 the Majles deposed the absentee last Qajar shah and a constituent assembly elected Reza Khan shah.⁵⁰ Britannica credits Reza Shah with educational and judicial reforms that laid the basis of a modern state, including the University of Tehran (1934) and a ban on the veil, and also says he banned trade unions and political parties and muzzled the press.⁵⁰ Under his rule Persian became the sole official language and publication in other languages was banned, a policy Minority Rights Group calls “Persianization,” and MRG notes that the state was known as Persia until 1935.²⁰

War and oil. Reza Shah’s refusal to abandon obligations to Germans in Iran served as the pretext for an Anglo-Soviet invasion in 1941; intent on ensuring safe passage of U.S. matériel to the Soviet Union, the Allies forced him to abdicate in favor of his son Mohammad Reza.⁵⁰ In 1951 the National Front’s Mohammad Mosaddegh became prime minister and immediately nationalized the oil industry; Britain imposed an embargo and the International Court of Justice declined to intervene.⁵⁰ In August 1953, after Mosaddegh’s quarrels with the shah came to a head, his government fell in a coup that Britannica says was orchestrated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s MI6.⁴⁹⁵⁰

The shah’s Iran. In 1957 the shah’s government created the secret police SAVAK, which Britannica says became “an omnipresent force within Iranian society.”⁵⁰ The “White Revolution” ratified in 1963 redistributed land to about 2.5 million families, set up literacy and health corps and advanced women’s legal rights; Britannica also says it disrupted rural life and angered clerics whose revenues from endowed land were cut.⁵⁰ In 1963 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini spoke out against the reforms, was arrested and was later exiled.⁵⁰ By the 1970s Britannica reports high inflation, stagnating living standards and few outlets for political participation, with torture and illegal detention common.⁵⁰

Back to contents

Britannica describes the revolution as a popular uprising in 1978–79 that toppled the monarchy and established an Islamic republic, with participants ranging from the secular left to the religious right who wanted an end to the shah’s autocracy and Western interference.⁴⁹ It began in January 1978 with protests by madrasa students; each death at the hands of government forces fed further protests, including those on the traditional 40-day mourning dates.⁴⁹

Timeline. Martial law was imposed on September 8, 1978; oil workers struck on October 31; on December 10 hundreds of thousands marched in Tehran.⁴⁹ The shah left Iran on January 16, 1979.⁵⁰ Crowds in excess of one million demonstrated in Tehran; Khomeini returned from exile on February 1 amid wild rejoicing, and on February 11 the armed forces declared neutrality, effectively ending the old regime.⁴⁹ Iran was declared an Islamic republic on April 1, 1979 after a referendum.⁵⁰

Afterward. Britannica says the clerical leadership quickly sidelined its left-wing, intellectual and centrist allies, and that conservative hard-liners gradually consolidated control of the new system.⁴⁹ It describes the resulting regime as one that “uniquely combined elements of a parliamentary democracy with an Islamic theocracy run by the country’s clergy.”³

Back to contents

Open warfare began on September 22, 1980, when Iraqi forces invaded western Iran; Iraq had claimed the war began earlier that month when Iran shelled border posts.⁵¹ Britannica says Saddam Hussein saw an opportunity in Iran’s post-revolution disarray and wanted to reassert claims to the Shatt al-Arab waterway.⁵¹ Iraq captured Khorramshahr but failed to take Abadan; Iran recaptured Khorramshahr in May 1982 and Iraq then withdrew from the rest of captured Iranian territory.⁵¹ Under Khomeini, Iran nevertheless continued the war to try to topple Saddam, and the conflict settled into a long stalemate.⁵¹

Operation Karbala-5 (1987). On January 8–9, 1987, Iran launched Karbala-5, its largest offensive of the war, pushing west between Iraq’s Fish Lake defenses and the Shatt al-Arab toward Basra; Iran called off the operation on February 26 without taking the city.⁷⁶ Casualty figures vary widely. During the battle, UPI reported that U.S. intelligence expected about 30,000 Iranian casualties if the fighting went on another week, with Iraqi losses about half that.⁷⁷ The Library of Congress study reproduced by GlobalSecurity gives about 65,000 Iranian and 20,000 Iraqi casualties.⁷⁶ An Iranian account reported in Persian-language media lists 7,651 Iranians killed, 53,299 wounded and 3,522 missing.⁷⁸ The battle was the last major Iranian offensive aimed at Basra.⁷⁶

Costs. The “Tanker War” from 1984 included strikes on more than 100 oil tankers in the Gulf.⁵¹ Iraq used chemical weapons, including against Kurdish civilians at Halabja in March 1988, where Britannica says as many as 5,000 were killed.⁵¹ In July 1988 a U.S. missile cruiser shot down Iran Air flight 655, killing 290.⁵¹ Iran accepted UN Security Council Resolution 598 on July 17, and the ceasefire took effect on August 20, 1988.⁵¹ Britannica gives casualty estimates from 1 million to twice that, with perhaps 500,000 killed on both sides and Iran suffering the greatest losses.⁵¹

Back to contents

Britannica says reformist elements rose within the government in the 1990s, opposed to the rule of conservative clergy and to isolation, but that their rise was reversed in the 21st century through intervention by the conservative leadership and the spread of the Revolutionary Guard through government and society.³ After the disputed presidential election of 2009 and the mass demonstrations that followed, significant antigovernment protests recurred several times in later years.⁴⁹ Iran reached the JCPOA nuclear agreement in 2015; the United States withdrew in 2018.³

Protests. Britannica reports that Iranians took to the streets in 2022 after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, and again from December 28, 2025, amid a free fall in the rial; it says the 2025–26 protests were brutally suppressed in January 2026, “the deadliest instance of repression since the Islamic Republic took power in 1979.”³

The most recent events. Britannica says Israel struck Iran in June 2025 and that U.S. and Israeli forces launched a conflict in late February 2026 that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, after which Mojtaba Khamenei was appointed supreme leader within days.³ Those events are still unfolding and are covered in our Iran hub and War Room, not on this page.

Iran’s people today. The United Nations projects Iran’s population at 93.2 million on July 1, 2026, while Iran’s Statistical Centre gives 87.1 million and Britannica’s 2026 estimate is 87.3 million, so the sources differ by about 6 million and do not explain why.¹²³ Britannica puts 77.7 percent of the population in cities (2024).³ Iranians have also won two Nobel Peace Prizes, to Shirin Ebadi in 2003 and Narges Mohammadi in 2023.⁸⁹

The diaspora. The Migration Policy Institute counted 385,000 Iranian-born immigrants in the United States in 2019, up from 122,000 in 1980, with growth driven first by the revolution and then by the Iran–Iraq War; more than half lived in California.¹⁰ Its report, citing 2019 United Nations estimates, puts the next largest Iranian-born populations abroad in Canada (164,000), Germany (127,000), the United Kingdom (90,000) and Turkey (83,000).¹⁰ Those figures are a few years old and counted only people born in Iran.

Where to go next. For current reporting see our Iran news hub. For how analysts measure the dependence and chokepoints behind Iran’s oil and sanctions story, including the Strait of Hormuz, see Understanding Global Trade Metrics and our Strait of Hormuz explainer.

Back to contents