Iran Today — and Against Forgetting

In June 1989, Ruhollah Khomeini died, leaving behind a country whose body still bore the fresh wounds of eight years of war with Iraq. The Assembly of Experts, in a transition many observers called swifter than expected, chose Ali Khamenei — then the president — as Leader; a choice accompanied by a revision of the constitution that dropped the requirement that the Leader be a supreme source of religious authority (marja') and that expanded his powers. At the same time, the office of prime minister was abolished and executive power concentrated in the hands of the president. Thus took shape a new political architecture that endures to this day: a Leader at the apex, and a cycle of governments oscillating between the two poles of reform and consolidation.

In the view of its critics, this structure produced a power that was extra-legal and unaccountable; in the account of its supporters, it was the continuation of the very "guardianship of the jurist" (velayat-e faqih) on which the revolution had been built. What is contested between these two readings — whether the knot of Iran's difficulties traces back to individuals and policies or to the structure itself — is a question that remains open throughout this chapter, without being adjudicated.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who became president in 1989, called his era one of "reconstruction": rebuilding the ruins of war, a relative liberalization of the economy, and an opening to foreign investment. These policies brought growth, but were also accompanied by inflation and a widening class divide. In 1997, in an election many called a surprise, Mohammad Khatami won a striking victory on a platform of civil society and freedom of expression, opening the "era of reform." Khatami advanced the idea of a "dialogue among civilizations" against the theory of a "clash of civilizations," and a more open intellectual climate emerged — though many publications were later shut down and the struggle between elected and appointed institutions intensified.

After Khatami, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005) came to power with a rhetoric of justice and the redistribution of oil income; an era known for high oil revenues, broad subsidies, and also for mounting tension over the nuclear program and sanctions. In 2013, Hassan Rouhani was elected on a promise of "moderation" and of untying the knot of sanctions through diplomacy. Some regard these swings as a sign of the system's internal dynamism, others as a cycle with no exit within a fixed framework; both readings are present in the scholarly literature.

Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran has always insisted is peaceful, became the focus of an international crisis from the mid-2000s onward. The United Nations Security Council passed several rounds of sanctions, and the European Union and the United States imposed sweeping sanctions on Iran's oil and banking system. Years of negotiation finally led, in July 2015, to the "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action" (JCPOA) between Iran and the P5+1: limits on nuclear activity in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. The agreement had both fervent supporters and staunch opponents within Iran, the United States, and Israel.

In May 2018, the administration of Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA and launched a policy it called "maximum pressure": reinstating and intensifying sanctions to compel Iran into new negotiations. In response, Iran stepped back, stage by stage, from some of its nuclear commitments. The dispute over which side first broke the agreement remains, to this day, a matter of conflicting accounts, and this chapter records it as a contested point, not a one-sided fact.

The return of sanctions placed Iran's economy under heavy pressure. The value of the rial against the dollar fell precipitously over the years, annual inflation repeatedly reached high double digits and at times approached fifty percent, and households' purchasing power declined sharply. Oil exports — the main artery of government revenue — were severely constrained, and access to global financial markets became difficult. Economic observers differ over the relative share of external sanctions versus internal mismanagement and corruption in this crisis; both factors appear in serious analyses.

One of the deep consequences of this pressure was an acceleration of emigration; especially the "brain drain": many physicians, engineers, researchers, and students left the country in search of opportunity and stability. Alongside this, a young, urban generation, connected to global networks, came of age, whose expectations and frustrations formed part of the backdrop to the successive protests of the years that followed.

In 2009, after a contested presidential election, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in protest of the result; a movement known by the question "Where is my vote?" and later named the "Green Movement." The government declared the result valid and attributed the protests to foreign instigation, while the protesters spoke of fraud. The movement's prominent leaders were held under house arrest for years. In December 2017 and again in December 2019, fresh waves of protest arose — this time centered on livelihood, high prices, and spread across smaller towns.

The protests of Aban (November) 2019, which began with a sudden tripling of the price of gasoline, were accompanied by harsh repression and a nationwide internet shutdown. The number of those killed in those days is deeply contested: human rights bodies and some international reports have spoken of hundreds to more than a thousand killed, whereas Iranian officials have rejected such figures and offered far lower numbers. This chapter treats none of these figures as definitive and records their discrepancy as an unresolved matter.

In September 2022, the death of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a young Kurdish woman, after her arrest by the "morality patrol" on a charge of improper veiling, sparked the broadest wave of protest of recent years. Amini's family and human rights groups held that the death was the consequence of being beaten in custody; official authorities declared it the result of an underlying illness, and these two accounts never reached a common point. The protests rapidly spread nationwide under the slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom," with women, students, and teenagers at their forefront.

The government called the protests "riots" arising from foreign interference and dealt with them harshly. Human rights organizations reported the killing of hundreds of protesters, including children, the detention of thousands, and the carrying out of several executions connected to the protests; the United Nations Human Rights Council established an independent fact-finding committee to examine these events. The number of those killed and the details of the repression remain contested and the subject of international inquiry; Iranian officials have called many of these reports inaccurate. Bidar records these events as a process whose final judgment is still pending.

The years 1403 to 1405 (2024 to 2026 CE) were marked by an escalation of regional tensions, direct confrontation between Iran and Israel, and the involvement of regional allies and rivals. In 1404 (2025 CE), what was called the "Twelve-Day War" broke out between Iran and Israel, reported to be accompanied as well by U.S. strikes on certain Iranian facilities. These events are very recent, sensitive, and developing; the accounts of the parties to the conflict regarding who started the war, the scope of the damage, the extent of the harm to nuclear facilities, and even who won on the field, are deeply different and at times contradictory.

Independent assessments of the consequences of this war are not yet complete, and sufficient verified data is not at hand. For this reason, Bidar refrains from stating contested results as settled fact: what is said is the claim of one party or another and must be understood as such. Our principle in the face of hot, unfinished events is caution; we leave the writing of the history of this period to a time when more documents and evidence become available.

Iran is a civilization that, across the span of millennia, has been conquered, ruined, and risen again many times over: from the invasion of Alexander to the onslaught of the Mongols, from the collapse of dynasties to earthquakes, famines, and wars. What we have followed in this book, from Cyrus and Darius to the Constitutional Revolution, the Revolution, and today, is the narrative of a people who have carried their language, their poetry, their script, and their collective memory safely through these rises and falls. Contemporary history, with all its bitterness and contestation, is one link in this enduring chain; not the end of the road, but a segment of a path that remains open.

Bidar's motivation from the outset has been just this: "Truth, with sources — against forgetting." Forgetting is not only the forgetting of names and dates; it is also the surrender of the narrative to power or to clamor. Against it, the only worthy weapon is the source: showing what we know, marking what we do not know, and leaving the question open where the answer has not yet arrived. In this chapter we have striven to take no side, to attribute every claim to the one who voiced it, and to call contested figures contested.

The end of this book is neither an optimistic promise nor a wail of despair. Iran today is a country with a young population, an ancient culture, and an uncertain future — a country whose fate, as always, its people will determine. Our task is not to judge that future; it is to guard memory, so that those who come after us may think and build upon the foundation of what truly happened. This is the meaning of standing against forgetting.