Iran

Overview

Since 2006, Iran has faced international pressure to shut down its nuclear program, which it insists is for peaceful purposes, defying a series of resolutions by the United Nations Security Council calling for the program's suspension. Instead, Mr. Ahmadinejad sought to make it a rallying point for national pride. The confidence of the country's rulers in 2007 and 2008 seemed to reflect its enhanced position in the region and the economic boost it received from soaring oil prices. Iran's archenemy, Saddam Hussein, had been replaced by a friendly, Shiite-led regime in Iraq, and Hamas and Hezbollah, militant groups supported by Iran, gained stature in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.

In 2009, however, oil prices were sharply lower, Hamas and Hezbollah were on the defensive, and the growing opposition movement showed a deeply divided country. In late September, President Obama, joined by Gordon Brown of Britain and Nicolas Sarkozy of France trumpeted news of a previously undisclosed nuclear facility that Iran had been construction in apparent violation of its treaty commitments. In talks with the United States and other major powers the next week, Iran agreed to have the plant visited by international inspectors and to send most of its openly declared enrich uranium to another country for enrichment. American officials, however, remained skeptical about whether those promises would be carried out.

The Nuclear Challenge

In 2003, under President Mohammad Khatami, a moderate, Iran admitted that it had been clandestinely pursuing an atomic program and agreed to suspend it. In 2006, under President Ahmadinejad, the country restarted a nuclear research program that it insisted was purely for peaceful purposes.

Iran defied a series of Security Council resolutions calling for a halt, and rebuffed diplomatic overtures from Europe and the United States. In May 2007 international inspectors reported that the country's scientists had mastered the process of enrichment, in which uranium is concentrated to the levels needed for power generation or, eventually, for an atomic bomb.

Late that year, American intelligence agencies issued a new National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that the weapons portion of the Iranian nuclear program remained on hold. Contradicting the assessment made in 2005, the report stated that the Iranian government did not appear determined to obtain nuclear weapons, although it said Iran's intentions were unclear, and that the country probably could not produce a bomb until the middle of the next decade.

American officials and international inspectors are concerned that Iran seems to have made significant progress in the three technologies necessary to field an effective nuclear weapon: enriching uranium to weapons grade; developing a missile capable of reaching Israel and parts of Western Europe; and designing a warhead that will fit on the missile. And in late September 2009, Iran said that its Revolutionary Guards test-fired missiles with sufficient range to strike Israel, parts of Europe and American bases in the Persian Gulf.

President Obama broke with President George W. Bush's policy by offering to negotiate directly with Tehran, but he continued to call the program a threat to the region. And like Mr. Bush, he found it difficult to persuade Russia and China to consider imposing tough sanctions on Iran if the talks failed.

On Sept. 25, 2009, President Obama and leaders of Britain and France accused Iran of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying the country has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years.

In talks with the United States and other major powers on Oct.1, the first such discussions in which the United States has participated fully, Iran agreed to open the newly revealed plant to international inspection within two weeks. It also agreed to send most of its openly declared enriched uranium outside Iran to be turned into fuel for a small reactor that produces medical isotopes. The West accepted the idea because it would have delayed, by about a year, Iran's ability to make a bomb.

However, the agreement is now in doubt as a result of the political struggle among Iran's elite, which has upended previous assessments about Iran's decision-making process, silenced more pragmatic voices and made it nearly impossible for anyone to support nuclear cooperation without being accused of capitulating to the West.

This move toward a harder line has stymied President Obama's attempts to open a new channel of communication with the Iranian leadership. Having set a year-end deadline for Iran to cooperate, the United States and its Western allies seem likely to seek to impose tougher sanctions on Iran, a step that some analysts fear could enable the more radical forces to monopolize power, at least in the short term.

Relations with the U.S. and Israel

Mr. Ahmadinejad has often denounced Israel. In 2008, President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran's main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran's suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

Tensions between Washington and Tehran -- which go back many decades, from Washington's participation in the 1953 coup that installed the shah, to the seizure of American diplomats in 1979 after the shah fell to an Islamic revolution -- also rose in 2007 and 2008 over Iran's involvement in Iraq. American military officials accused elements of Iran's Revolutionary Guard of supplying Shiite militants in Iraq with powerful roadside bombs to use against American forces.

During the 2008 American presidential campaign, Barack Obama was the only candidate to say he favored unconditional talks with Iran, though he condemned its nuclear program. In his first interview after taking office, on Al Arabiya television, an Arabic-language channel based in Dubai, Mr. Obama said that "if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us."

President Ahmadinejad responded by calling for an apology for decades of American misdeeds, but did not explicitly reject the overture. The move signaled the start of a long-delayed war-or-peace drama that may help define the Obama administration's plans to remake America's approach to diplomacy, but could cause problems between the U.S. and Israel.

During the protests that followed the disputed 2009 election, Mr. Obama called violence against demonstrators "outrageous'' and "appalling,'' but stressed that the United States would still seek to engage Iran's new government in talks over the nuclear program. On July 6, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said the United States "cannot dictate'' to Israel whether or not it should take action against Iran's nuclear sites.

The 2009 Presidential Campaign

The major candidates in the hotly disputed 2009 presidential election were the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Mir Hussein Moussavi, a former prime minister.

Mr. Moussavi served as prime minister from 1980 to 1988. He is well remembered by many Iranians for managing the country during its eight-year war with Iraq, and for introducing food rationing. An architect and painter, he has not held a government post since the Constitution was amended to eliminate the position of prime minister in 1989.

Mr. Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in June 2005 on a mandate to distribute the country's growing oil income among the poor. The son of a blacksmith, he was an unknown figure in the country's politics who had only served as Tehran's mayor for two years and earlier as a provincial governor for four years. But with the support of the country's religious and military circles -- who had been frustrated with the policies of Mr. Khatami, his moderate predecessor, Mr. Ahmadinejad appealed to a large rural constituency who voted for him in hope for economic change.

But Mr. Ahmadinejad soon became known on the international stage as the face of Iran's defiance over its nuclear program and hostility towards Israel. He shocked the world when he called the Holocaust a "myth' and repeated an old slogan from the early days of the 1979 revolution, saying "Israel must be wiped off the map."

In the course of the campaign, the candidates exchanged accusations that were extraordinarily strong for Iranian politics

A Disputed Election and Its Violent Aftermath

Before the voting, supporters of Mr. Moussavi were hopeful, given the large and energetic crowds that had been turning out at his rallies. But early on the morning of  June 13, only two hours after polls had closed from the previous day's voting, Mr. Ahmadinejad was declared the winner, with 63 percent of the vote to 35 percent for Mr. Moussavi.

Mr. Moussavi and a number of other losing candidates denounced the results and rallies were held in cities across the country. Ayatollah Khamenei initially swung between statements in support of Mr. Ahmadinejad and conciliatory gestures. But after a week of large protests and skirmishes between demonstrators and security forces, he gave an angry sermon in which he warned of violence if dissent continued. Over the weekend the police and the Basiji militia moved more aggressively to break up rallies, using guns, clubs, tear gas and water cannons.

Details of the street clashes, the number of deaths and the number of political opponents were sketchy, as the regime cracked down on journalists and moved to block as much cell-phone, text-messaging and Internet traffic as possible, though word filtered out, often through posts on Twitter.

The Guardian Council acknowledged that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the actual number of voters by three million, but insisted that the discrepancies did not violate Iranian law or affect the outcome of the election.

Opponents maintained their defiance, calling for continued protests and the release of detainees.  A few conservatives have expressed revulsion at the sight of unarmed protesters being beaten, even shot, by government forces. Only 105 out of the 290 members of Parliament took part in a victory celebration for Mr. Ahmadinejad on June 23, newspapers reported two days later. The absence of so many lawmakers, including the speaker, Ali Larijani, a powerful conservative, was striking. In early July, an influential clerical association based in the city of Qum, the center of the country's spiritual life, called the new government illegitimate.

With a mass trial of more than 100 alleged dissidents under way, Mr. Ahmadinejad was formally endorsed as Iran's leader for a second term by Mr. Khameni. But prominent opponents stayed away from the event, news reports said, and did so again when Mr. Ahmadinejad was sworn in on Aug. 6 for a second term.

The endorsement ceremony came one day after state television broadcast a chilling segment of the mass trial in which two defendants - both prominent reform figures - said they had "changed" since being arrested and disputed widespread claims that their publicized confessions had been coerced through torture.

A top judiciary official later acknowledged that some detainees arrested after post-election protests had been tortured, the first such acknowledgment by a senior Iranian official.

A reformist cleric and presidential candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, reported in a letter that several women and men arrested amid violent demonstrations had been repeatedly raped and abused by their jailers at one detention center. The accusations of rape - usually a taboo subject in Iran - multiplied, provoking strong reactions in Iran's clerical leadership. 

The Ashura Protests and Government Crackdown

The authorities' use of deadly force on the Dec. 27 Ashura holiday drew a fierce rebuke from Mr. Karroubi, who noted that even the shah had honored the holiday's ban on violence. Thirteen people were reported to have been killed and many more wounded in street battles in cities across the country between security forces and protesters.

All told, more than 1,500 people have been arrested nationwide since Ashura, including 1,110 in Tehran and 400 in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the pro-opposition Jaras Web site reported. Among those detained was the sister of Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi.

President Obama condemned the violence against protesters and called for the release of those "unjustly detained."

"For months, the Iranian people have sought nothing more than to exercise their universal rights," Mr. Obama told reporters. "Each time they have done so, they have been met with the iron fist of brutality, even on solemn occasions and holy days."

Government supporters blamed opposition members for the violence and called for their prosecution. The Revolutionary Guards issued a statement calling violence by the protesters a "horrible insult to Ashura" and called for "firm punishment of those behind this obvious insult," the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

Iranian authorities also accused the United States and Britain of orchestrating the violent demonstrations that rocked the capital and other cities on Dec. 27.

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