Afghan ruleIn Afghan interlude
...and depopulating the rural areas. These tactics sparked a massive flight from the countryside; by 1982 some 2.8 million Afghans had sought asylum in Pakistan, and another 1.5 million had fled to Iran. The mujahideen were eventually able to neutralize Soviet air power through the use of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles supplied by the Soviet Union’s Cold War adversary, the United States.
Prior to independence Iran asserted its claim to the Al-Shāriqah island of Abū Mūsā, in the open gulf northwest of Al-Shāriqah town, and landed troops there. A subsequent agreement between Iran and Al-Shāriqah promised that both flags would fly over the island, settled the question of possible future oil discoveries in the area (where Al-Shāriqah had...
The Persians captured Muscat in 1743. The Yaʿrubids dissolved into dynastic dispute, and a leader named Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd set to liberating Oman from the Persians. He became imam in 1749, founding the Āl Bū Saʿīd dynasty. This period in Oman is marked by the crystallization of the political alignment of the tribes of the Banū Ghāfir...
...to the rich oil states of the gulf arose with the revolution in Iran in 1978–79 and with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. Islamic fundamentalism in the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Iran struck an answering chord with Shīʿites and Iranian workers in the Arabian states, which gave financial support to Iraq. U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his successor in 1981, Ronald...
axis of evil
expression used to describe the bellicose tendencies of Iran, North Korea, and Iraq in the early 21st century. The phrase was coined by Canadian-born U.S. presidential speechwriter David Frum and presidential aide Michael Gerson for use by U.S. President George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address, when he asserted that
states like these, and their terrorist allies,...
TITLE: Azerbaijan: History
...Ottoman Turks who came to dominate Anatolia, the Caucasian Muslims of Azerbaijan in the early 16th century became Shīʿite, rather than Sunni, Muslims, and they continued to develop under Persian social and cultural influence. Persian-ruled khanates in Shirvan (Şamaxı), Baku, Ganja (Gäncä), Karabakh, and Yerevan dominated this frontier of Ṣafavid Iran.
TITLE: Bahrain: Domestic and foreign relations since independence
SECTION: Domestic and foreign relations since independence
...defense and has helped both countries economically and politically. Bahrain has maintained relatively good relations with the United States and has continued to house the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Iran’s ties to the country’s Shīʿite community, its territorial claims to the island, and its displeasure with the American presence in Bahrain have helped to strain relations between it...
Central Treaty Organization
mutual security organization dating from 1955 to 1979 and composed of Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. Until March 1959 the organization was known as the Middle East Treaty Organization, included Iraq, and had its headquarters in Baghdad.
CIA’s coup d’etat
The conservative Cabinet in London, the French, and the Israelis resolved to thwart Nasser. They could cite as precedent a CIA-backed coup d’état in Iran (August 1953) that overthrew the ascetic nationalist Mohammad Mosaddeq, who had expropriated foreign oil interests and also looked for support to the U.S.S.R. In any case, British, French, and Israeli planners met to work out a joint...
TITLE: Georgia: Turkish and Persian domination
SECTION: Turkish and Persian domination
...Ottoman Empire in 1453 isolated Georgia from western Christendom. In 1510 the Ottomans invaded Imereti and sacked the capital, Kʿutʿaisi. Soon afterward, Shah Ismāʿīl I of Iran (Persia) invaded Kartli. Ivan IV (the Terrible) and other Muscovite tsars showed interest in the little Christian kingdoms of Georgia, but the Russians were powerless to stop the Muslim...
Prior to the Islamic revolution of 1978–79 in Iran, SAVAK (Organization of National Security and Information), the Iranian secret police and intelligence service, protected the regime of the shah by arresting, torturing, and executing many dissidents. After the shah’s government fell, SAVAK and other intelligence services were eliminated and new services were created, though many low- and...
In early 1985 the head of the NSC, Robert C. McFarlane, undertook the sale of antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran in the mistaken belief that such a sale would secure the release of a number of American citizens who were being held captive in Lebanon by Shīʿite terrorist groups loyal to Iran. This and several subsequent weapon sales to Iran in 1986 directly contradicted the...
Iran-Iraq WarIn Iran-Iraq War
...with U.S. and Chinese weapons, held out in the mountains against more than 100,000 Soviet troops and terror bombing of their villages. More than 2,000,000 Afghans became refugees in Pakistan and Iran. Western observers soon began to speak of Afghanistan as the Soviets’ Vietnam.
The war between Iraq and Iran, which began in 1980, also reached a conclusion. The war had been conducted with the utmost ferocity on both sides. The Iraqi leader, Hussein, employed every weapon in his arsenal, including Soviet Scud missiles and poison gas purchased from West Germany, and the Iranian regime of Ayatollah Khomeini ordered its Revolutionary Guards to make human-wave assaults...
For nearly two years after the UN-brokered cease-fire in the Persian Gulf, the governments of Iraq and Iran failed to initiate conversations toward a permanent peace treaty. Suddenly, in July 1990, the foreign ministers of the two states met in Geneva full of optimism about the prospects for peace. Why Saddam Hussein now seemed willing to liquidate his decade-long conflict with Iran and even...
TITLE: Kuwait: Iran-Iraq War
SECTION: Iran-Iraq War
...to Kuwait’s security. Kuwait, fearing Iranian hegemony in the region, saw no alternative to providing Iraq with substantial financial support and serving as a vital conduit for military supplies. Iran attacked a Kuwaiti refinery complex in 1981, which inspired subsequent acts of sabotage in 1983 and 1986. In 1985 a member of the underground pro-Iranian Iraqi radical group al-Daʿwah...
TITLE: India: Humāyūn
...to retreat to Lahore; he then fled from Lahore to the Sindh (or Sind) region, from Sindh to Rajputana, and from Rajputana back to Sindh. Not feeling secure even in Sindh, he fled (July 1543) to Iran to seek military assistance from its ruler, the Ṣafavid Shah Ṭahmāsp I. The shah agreed to assist him with an army on the condition that Humāyūn become a...
Nadr Qolī Beg had an obscure beginning in the Turkish Afshar tribe, which was loyal to the Ṣafavid shahs of Iran. After serving under a local chieftain, Nadr formed and led a band of robbers, showing marked powers of leadership. In 1726, as head of this group of bandits, he led 5,000 followers in support of the Ṣafavid shah Ṭahmāsp II, who was seeking to...
TITLE: nuclear weapon: Iran
In the late 1970s the United States obtained intelligence indicating that Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi had established a clandestine nuclear weapons program, though Iran had signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) that followed interrupted this program, but by the late 1980s new efforts were under way, especially...
...in Finland and Iran and were programmed to run motors at very specific high speeds. This combination indicated to analysts that the likely target of Stuxnet was nuclear installations in Iran—either a uranium-enrichment plant at Naṭanz or a nuclear reactor at Būshehr or both—a conclusion supported by data showing that, of the approximately 100,000 computers...
TITLE: Ottoman Empire: Bayezid II
SECTION: Bayezid II
...(called Kizilbash [“Redheads”] because of their use of red headgear to symbolize their allegiance); the Ṣafavids used a combined religious and military appeal to conquer most of Iran. Under the shah Ismāʿīl I (1501–24), the Ṣafavids sent missionaries throughout Anatolia, spreading a message of religious heresy and political revolt, not only...
TITLE: Ottoman Empire: Reform efforts
SECTION: Reform efforts
...end by Shah ʿAbbās I, who not only restored Iranian power but also conquered Iraq (1624) and threatened to take the entire Ottoman Empire. Though Murad IV was able to retake Iraq (1638), Iran remained a major threat. Finally, a long war with Venice (1645–69), occasioned by Ottoman efforts to capture Crete, exposed Istanbul to a major Venetian naval attack. Although the...
overthrow of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi
Carter’s success in Middle Eastern diplomacy was likewise undercut by the collapse of the strongest and staunchest American ally in the Muslim world, the Shah of Iran. Since the monarchy had been restored by a CIA-aided coup in 1953, Reza Shah Pahlavi had used Iran’s oil revenues to finance rapid modernization of his country and the purchase of American arms. Nixon had chosen Iran to be a U.S....
Pahlavi ruleIn Pahlavi dynasty
Persian Cossack Brigade
cavalry unit founded in Iran in 1879 and modeled after Russian Cossack formations. It began as a regiment and was enlarged within a few months to a brigade and later, during World War I, into a division.
Peter the Great
Even during the second half of the Northern War, Peter had sent exploratory missions to the East—to the Central Asian steppes in 1714, to the Caspian region in 1715, and to Khiva in 1717. The end of the war left him free to resume a more active policy on his southeastern frontier. In 1722, hearing that the Ottoman Turks would take advantage of Persia’s weakness and invade the Caspian...
post-World War I rebellion
The Young Turk and Kemalist rebellions were models for other Islāmic revolts against Western imperialism. Persian nationalists had challenged the shah and Anglo-Russian influence before 1914 and flirted with the Young Turks (hence with Germany) during the war. By August 1919, however, British forces had contained both domestic protest and an ephemeral Bolshevik incursion and won a treaty...
Qājār ruleIn Qājār dynasty
...and Ṭunb al-Ṣughrā), in the Gulf about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Raʾs al-Khaymah town; these islands had long been claimed by both Raʾs al-Khaymah and Iran. On Nov. 30, 1971, Iranian troops landed on Greater Ṭunb and met armed resistance from Raʾs al-Khaymah police. Iran, however, remained in possession of the islands.
In the Persian Gulf the Reagan administration held publicly aloof from the war between Iraq and Iran. Intelligence that Shīʿite terrorists were behind the kidnapping of Americans in Beirut, however, prompted the administration secretly to supply arms to Iran in return for help, never forthcoming, in securing the release of hostages. There was also a notion that such a deal might forge...
...then acknowledged their subjection to the Russians, the Ossetes in 1802 and the Lezgians in 1803. Mingrelia fell in 1804 and the kingdom of Imereti in 1810. By the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813, Persia ceded to Russia a wide area of the khanates of the eastern Caucasus, from Länkäran northward to Derbent. Russia had little difficulty in acquiring by conquest from Persia in 1828 a...
Ṣafavid ruleIn Ṣafavid dynasty
TITLE: Saudi Arabia: Foreign policy since the end of the Persian Gulf War
SECTION: Foreign policy since the end of the Persian Gulf War
With Iraq seemingly chastened by the Persian Gulf War, Saudi worries over regional security turned to Iran, which, since the Islamic revolution, had purportedly sought to export the revolution to other countries in the region with significant Shīʿite populations, such as Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. In strongly opposing Iran, the Saudi government also followed the U.S....
...United States gave up its hopes of cooperation in favour of what would soon be called “containment.” The first manifestation occurred in March 1946, when the U.S.S.R. failed to evacuate Iran on schedule and Secretary of State Byrnes was obliged to go to the UN Security Council and even hint at hostilities to get Moscow to retreat. This incident, together with Soviet pressure on...
TITLE: Syria: Uprising and civil war
SECTION: Uprising and civil war
...by government forces on the northern Syrian city of Jisr al-Shugūr. The worsening humanitarian situation brought calls for international military intervention, but Syria’s allies Russia and Iran continued to object, calling for the Syrian government to be given more time to deal with internal unrest. In October, Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the...
...proxy war. Efforts by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to fund and arm rebels became increasingly public in late 2012 and early 2013, while the Syrian government continued to receive weapons from Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. By late 2012 Hezbollah had also begun sending its own fighters into Syria to battle the rebels.
...intelligible to Tajiks. Despite sectarian differences (most Tajiks are Sunni Muslims, while Iranians are predominantly Shīʿites), Tajiks also have strong ties to the culture and people of Iran; the Tajik and Persian languages are closely related and mutually intelligible. The Tajiks’ centuries-old economic symbiosis with oasis-dwelling Uzbeks also somewhat confuses the expression of a...
...and, on the Polish question, the western Allies and the Soviet Union found themselves in sharp dissension, Stalin expressing his continued distaste for the Polish government-in-exile in London. On Iran, which Allied forces were partly occupying, they were able to agree on a declaration (published on December 1, 1943) guaranteeing the postwar independence and territorial integrity of that state...
TITLE: Jimmy Carter: Presidency
...substantial foreign policy successes were overshadowed by a serious crisis in foreign affairs and by a groundswell of popular discontent over his economic policies. On November 4, 1979, a mob of Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehrān and took the diplomatic staff there hostage. Their actions, in response to the arrival of the deposed shah (Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi) in...
TITLE: Algeria: Foreign relations
SECTION: Foreign relations
...after 1975 with the Western Sahara issue. Yet, while Algeria continued to support the Palestine Liberation Organization, it also took a decisive role in mediating the release of U.S. hostages in Iran in 1981. Throughout the Cold War, Algeria sought to play the leading role in establishing a Third World alternative that was not aligned to the Eastern or Western bloc. The country also tried to...
TITLE: United States: Foreign affairs
SECTION: Foreign affairs
Carter’s greatest defeat was administered by Iran. In that country, following the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had been supported by the United States, the Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed on February 1, 1979, under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In November militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehrān and held its occupants hostage. An attempt to...
World War I
TITLE: World War I: The Caucasus, 1914–16
SECTION: The Caucasus, 1914–16
...exposure and exhaustion than in fighting (their 3rd Army was reduced in one month from 190,000 to 12,400 men, the battle casualties being 30,000). Turkish forces, which had meanwhile invaded neutral Persia’s part of Azerbaijan and taken Tabriz on January 14, were expelled by a Russian counterinvasion in March.
World War II
At the outset of World War II Iran was pro-German, and in August 1941 the Soviet Union and Britain jointly occupied the country, which then became the main supply line connecting the Soviet Union with the Western Allies. In 1942, in a three-power treaty, both Britain and the Soviet Union promised to leave Iran six months after the end of the war. Notwithstanding such commitments, the Soviet...
TITLE: World War II: Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941
SECTION: Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941
...of July 12, 1941, pledged the signatory powers to assist one another and to abstain from making any separate peace with Germany. On August 25, 1941, British and Soviet forces jointly invaded Iran, to forestall the establishment of a German base there and to divide the country into spheres of occupation for the duration of the war; and late in September—at a conference in...
Zand ruleIn Zand dynasty