Iran+--+Pd.+3+political+and+economic+change

Critical Junctures
Iran was not always Iran it was once known as Persia but in 1935 it all changed. Iran then became an Islamic republic in 1979 after the king and queen were taken over and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was exiled. Then a theocracy was formed with the last say being the Supreme Leader who was supposed to just be accountable for the Assembly of Experts which is a popularly elected 86-member body of clerics. In November 1979 a group of Iranian students took over the US Embassy and had it until 1981. From 1980-88 they fought a malicious war against Iraq that went into the Persian golf and ended up in an altercation with the US Navy and Iranian military forces between 1987 and 1988. Iran has been known as a terroristic country because of its past and is still has economic sanctions and export controls from the US, UN, and EU. In the future conservatives regained control over Iran's elected government institutions which reached its peak in August 2005 inauguration of hardliner Mahmud Ahmadinejad. When he was reelected in June 2009 started a nationwide protests over not having free and fair elections. [] [] pic link



Important People:

 * Ahmadinejad became the first non-cleric president to lead Iran in 24 years he dominated the presidential runoff election  with an amasing 17,046,441 votes out of a total of 27,536,069 votes cast.
 * Cyrus the Great (580-529 BC) was the first [|Achaemenid]  Emperor. He made Persia by Conquering then uniting the two original Iranian Tribes which were the Medes and the Persians. He was known to be a great conqueror and he also remembered for his magnanimous attitude to the ones he defeated.
 * Khamenei, ali hoseini- Grand Ayatollah Shi'a Iran 70 years old “ The idea of human rights as a fundamental principle can be seen to underlie throughout Islamic teachings.”  “ The issue of human rights is one of the most fundamental human issues and also one of the most sensitive and controversial.”
 * Khatami, mohammad- Was cultural adviser to his predecessor Hashemi Rafsanjani and head of Iran's National Library he was also a president that won 70% of the vote when he ran and he wasn’t afraid to smile and show a public side.
 * Khomeini, Ruhollah- Religious Leader Who headed the Iranian Revolution in 1979, he also Guarded the Islamic Jurists and established the Islamic government in iran.
 * Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-80), king of Iran (1941-1979 married a sister of Faroq I king of Egypt married two more times, in 1950 with Soraya Esfandiari and 1959 with Farah Diba went to the throne on September 16, 1941 before his 22nd birthday reformed policies government was contested

Economic policies
Iran's economy is a non-homogeneous mixture of state ownership of large enterprises, village based farming, low tech private manufacturing, and small-scale private trading. In many areas the government directly competes with the private sectors