Goals. Iranians sought to end the repressive dictatorship of
Extravagance, corruption and elitism (both real and perceived) of the Shah's policies and of his royal court. His failure to cultivate supporters in the Shi'a religious leadership to counter Khomeini's campaign against him.
By 11 February 1979, the monarchy was officially brought down and Khomeini assumed leadership over Iran while guerrillas and rebel troops overwhelmed Pahlavi loyalists in armed combat.
The use of torture and abuse of prisoners varied at times during the Pahlavi reign, according to one history, but both of two monarchs – Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi – employed censorship, secret police, torture, and executions.
Recent News. Iranian Revolution, also called Islamic Revolution, Persian Enqelāb-e Eslāmī, popular uprising in Iran in 1978–79 that resulted in the toppling of the monarchy on February 11, 1979, and led to the establishment of an Islamic republic.
The coup was organized by the United States' CIA and the United Kingdom's MI6, two spy agencies that aided royalists and royalist elements of the Iranian army. Much of the money was channeled through the pro-Shah Ayatollah Mohammad Behbahani, who drew many religious masses to the plot.
The major cause of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was the government's inability to satisfy the rising expectations of the Iranian people—especially following the sudden enormous increase in the price of oil in 1973.
Mahafarid Amir Khosravi (Persian: مهآفرید امیرخسروی) ( c. 1969 – 24 May 2014), also known as Amir Mansour Aria (Persian: امیرمنصور آریا), was an Iranian businessman who was executed for his part in the 2011 Iranian embezzlement scandal. At one time, he was considered the richest man in Iran.
Abrahamian estimates that SAVAK (and other police and military) killed 368 guerrillas including the leadership of the major urban guerrilla organizations (Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas, People's Mujahedin of Iran) such as Hamid Ashraf between 1971–1977 and executed up to 100 political prisoners ...
President Nixon, who had first met the Shah in 1953, regarded him as a modernizing anticommunist statesman who deserved American support now that the British were withdrawing from the region.
Ancient Iran, historically known as Persia, was the dominant nation of western Asia for over twelve centuries, with three successive native dynasties—the Achaemenid, the Parthian, and the Sasanian—controlling an empire of unprecedented size and complexity.
The constitution defines the country as an Islamic republic and specifies Twelver Ja'afari Shia Islam as the official state religion. It states all laws and regulations must be based on “Islamic criteria” and an official interpretation of sharia.
The government said $10 billion of that sum was to cover 'properties of the Iranian nation plundered by the deposed shah and his relatives. ' But the revolutionary government, in charging the shah with massive corruption, admitted it had no accurate accounting on the Pahlavi family wealth or where it is located.
The Islamization of Iran occurred as a result of the Muslim conquest of Persia in 633–654. It was a long process by which Islam, though initially rejected, eventually spread among the population on the Iranian Plateau.
For most of history, the tract of land now called Iran was known as Persia. It wasn't until 1935 that it adopted its present name.
As America's base in the region, Iran needed a powerful intelligence organization. Also, the USSR and neighbors used to pose a serious threat to the interests of the US. Not only did CIA help with the foundation of Savak, but the FBI helped a lot to create and develop it.
According to Ervand Abrahamian, the Israeli intelligence service (Mossad), the CIA and the FBI assisted the Shah's regime in establishing SAVAK in 1957 (Iran Between Two Revolutions 1982, 419).
It is also known as VAJA and previously as VEVAK (Vezarat-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar) or alternatively MOIS.
Government authorities have generally avoided publicly executing political prisoners because it generates greater domestic and international outcry. Nonetheless, political prisoners have still been publicly executed, in some cases under the pretense of being drug traffickers.
Iran Mousavi Sani, 75, and her husband Akbar Khorramdin, 81, admitted to killing their 47-year-old son last May after parts of his body were found in a dumpster in Ekbatan, a suburb of Tehran.
Iran continues to use the death penalty in violation of international law, including death sentences for crimes failing to meet the “most serious” crime threshold, the use of torture, and performing public executions.
Shah (/ʃɑː/; Persian: شاه, Šâh [ʃɒːh], lit. 'king') is a royal title that was historically used by the leading figures of Iranian monarchies.
The invasion's purpose, per Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, was to blunt the edge of Iranian Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini's movement and thwart his attempts to export Iran's Islamic Revolution to Saddam's secular Iraq and the Persian Gulf states.
With the Revolution, the Iranian monarchy was formally abolished, and Iran was declared an Islamic republic led by Ruhollah Khomeini. The Shah died in exile in Egypt, where he had been granted asylum by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
In the Western world, Persia (or one of its cognates) was historically the common name used for Iran.