Iran

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaks about Iran's nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran.

Hasan Sarbakhshian / AP

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Iran has been ruled by kings for most of its 3,000 years of recorded history—a long succession of autocrats prone to exaggerated self-regard. The 4th century monarch Shapur II called himself "partner with the stars," and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the 20th century shah, spoke of himself as "king of kings." While Iranians accepted the autocratic tradition over long eras of Arab and Mongol conquest, their tolerance for dictatorship has waned in the past century. As a result, Iran's modern story is one of perpetual friction between democratic movements and iron-fisted rulers dedicated to control.

In the first half of the 20th century, Iran was nominally run by the Qajar Dynasty, but the country's strategic territorial position and abundant resources made it an attractive arena for Britain and Russia to vie for control. Outraged that Iran was vulnerable to the designs of imperial powers, an assortment of clerics and merchants launched the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, which checked the authority of the monarchy and created a democratic parliament. In 1925, an ambitious military officer named Reza Khan overthrew the Qajars and proclaimed himself king of the new Pahlavi dynasty. He banned the veil, built railroads and schools and created a national army, before abdicating power to his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in 1941. The young shah, pliable before the Western consortiums who were wresting staggering profits from Iran's oil industry, was easily overshadowed by Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister who became an epic hero by nationalizing Iranian oil in 1951.

The U.S. and Britain, alarmed by Mossadegh's oil nationalization, staged a coup in 1953 that deposed the prime minister and reinstalled the unpopular Shah as head of government. Over the next three decades, the Shah transformed Iran into a regional player with modern telecommunications, a growing economy with per capita income equivalent to Spain's, and an emerging middle-class. But Iranian intellectuals and clerics never forgave the Western intervention that secured his rule, and resented his authoritarian ways and cozy ties with the U.S.

In 1979, an array of leftist groups joined forces with an Islamic opposition movement to stir a popular uprising against his government. After more than a million people demonstrated in the streets, the court fled, the army turned against the Shah and the revolution triumphed. Though many of the revolutionaries sought only more accountable government, Islamic militants led by Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini steered the popular uprising toward open confrontation with the West. When radical students took U.S. diplomats hostage at the American embassy later that year, the revolution donned its anti-American mantle.

The following decades of Iran-U.S. tensions are familiar history, leading to proxy confrontations in distant places such as Lebanon—where Iran backed the militant group Hizbullah—and to the present-day clash over Iran's nuclear program. For most of the 1980s, Iran focused on fighting its bloody eight-year war with Iraq, a conflict that claimed more than a million lives on both sides. While waging the war, the young Islamic republic sought to export its revolution across the Middle East, fostering Shia minorities throughout the Gulf. Only when the fighting ended in 1989 and Iran confronted its devastated economy, reduced oil production and spiraling population growth, did the government reconsider Shia ideology as its top state priority.

The pragmatic President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani initiated a program of liberalization known in Iran as "the China model," stressing economic growth at the expense of political openness. Iranian young people, deeply frustrated with the lack of social freedom and real economic opportunity, remained dissatisfied. In the late-1990s, Iran experienced a democratic revival on the watch of moderate President Mohammad Khatami. An independent press flourished, a vibrant women's movement gained grassroots popularity, and a fledgling civil society emerged. Ultimately, however, the reformers ran afoul of the Islamic Republic's constitution, which grants virtually unchecked power to the supreme leader. In 2005, hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad succeeded Khatami in elections that were widely suspected of being rigged. Ahmadinejad's exaggerated rhetoric and threats to "wipe Israel off the map" have won him adulation in the Arab and Islamic world, but are now considered foolish by most Iranians, who believe the President has damaged Iran's international reputation.

The central issue the world now faces in dealing with Iran is the country's nuclear program. As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Tehran is entitled to run a civilian nuclear energy program under the oversight of UN inspectors. But the U.S. and Europe, citing decades of clandestine activity, believe the program is a cover for developing the expertise required to build a bomb. Over the past four years, Western negotiators have vainly sought to coax Iran to abandon the most controversial aspect of its nuclear program—uranium enrichment—in exchange for a package of economic and security incentives.

While Ahmadinejad's bellicose posture has increased anxiety in the West, the president lacks final say over matters of state. The man really in charge, Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, is considered by diplomats and Iranian insiders as a risk-averse conservative, as reluctant to provoke the West as to engage it. Western analysts believe Tehran's real goal is to gain power and recognition in the Middle East. The notion that it needs nuclear know-how to do that, however, has gained prevalence in the past four years as Iran has felt increasingly threatened by U.S. forces surrounding it in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.

With Washington talking of invading Iran, or at least intimidating it with economic pressure, another basic question under debate is how long the regime can last. Periodic, colorful protests have convinced many in Washington that the mullahs are on the brink of being toppled by their own overwhelmingly young, resentful populace. But by cracking down on dissent and filtering the Internet, the government maintains control of the political sphere. More worrisome are the high unemployment and inflation that are squeezing the Iranian middle-class, and the unprecedentedly dim prospects for job growth and economic reform. In the long run, the real threat to the regime comes not from political opposition but from economic decline.

—By Azadeh Moaveni