Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei is an Iranian Twelver Shia marja' and politician who has served as the second supreme leader of Iran since 1989. He previously served as third president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. Khamenei is the longest-serving head of state in the Middle East, as well as the second-longest-serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Ali Akbar Hashimi Bahramani Rafsanjani was an Iranian politician and writer who served as the fourth president of Iran from 1989 to 1997. One of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic, Rafsanjani was the head of the Assembly of Experts from 2007 until 2011 when he decided not to nominate himself for the post. He was also the chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council.
Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri was an Iranian Shia Islamic theologian, Islamic democracy advocate, writer and human rights activist. He was one of the leaders of the Iranian Revolution and one of the highest-ranking authorities in Shīʿite Islam. He was once the designated successor to the revolution's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, but they had a falling-out in 1989 over government policies that Montazeri claimed infringed on people's freedom and denied them their rights, especially after the 1988 mass execution of political prisoners. Montazeri spent his later years in Qom and remained politically influential in Iran, but was placed in house arrest in 1997 for questioning "the unaccountable rule exercised by the supreme leader", Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini in his stead. He was known as the most knowledgeable senior Islamic scholar in Iran and a grand marja of Shia Islam. Ayatollah Montazeri was said to be one of Khamenei's teachers.
The "Great Satan" is a derogatory epithet used in some Muslim-majority countries to refer to the United States. Alongside the "Death to America" slogan, it originated in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. While it is primarily an expression of anti-American sentiment, it has occasionally been used to refer to the United Kingdom, although the term "old fox" is more popular as a dedicated expression of anti-British sentiment.
On 31 July 1987, during the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, a clash between Shia pilgrim demonstrators and the Saudi Arabian security forces resulted in the death of more than 400 people. The event has been variously described as a "riot" or a "massacre". It developed from increasing tensions between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Since 1981, Iranian pilgrims have held a political demonstration against Israel and the United States every year at Hajj, but in 1987, a cordon of Saudi police and the Saudi Arabian National Guard sealed part of the planned demonstration route, resulting in a confrontation between them and the pilgrims. This escalated into a violent clash, followed by a deadly stampede.
One of the most dramatic changes in government in Iran's history was seen with the 1979 Iranian Revolution where Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown and replaced by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The authoritarian monarchy was replaced by a long-lasting Shiite Islamic republic based on the principle of guardianship of Islamic jurists,, where Shiite jurists serve as head of state and in many powerful governmental roles. A pro-Western, pro-American foreign policy was exchanged for one of "neither east nor west", said to rest on the three "pillars" of mandatory veil (hijab) for women, and opposition to the United States and Israel. A rapidly modernizing capitalist economy was replaced by a populist and Islamic economy and culture.
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been embroiled in tense relations with the U.S. and its allies. Following the hostage crisis, both countries severed relations. Since then, both countries have been involved in numerous direct confrontations, diplomatic incidents, and proxy wars throughout the Middle East, which has caused the tense nature of the relationship between the two to be called an 'international crisis'. Both countries have often accused each other of breaking international law on several occasions. The U.S. has often accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism and of illegally maintaining a nuclear program, as well as using strong rhetoric against Israel, of which Iran has questioned its legitimacy and its right to exist while supporting Hamas, an antizionist terrorist group in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Iran has often accused the U.S. of human rights violations and of meddling in their affairs, especially within the Iranian Democracy Movement.
The Houthi movement, officially known as Ansar Allah, is a Shia Islamist political and military organization that emerged from Yemen in the 1990s. It is predominantly made up of Zaidi Shias, with their namesake leadership being drawn largely from the Houthi tribe.
Bilateral relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been strained over several geopolitical issues, such as aspirations for regional leadership, oil export policy and relations with the United States and other Western countries. Diplomatic relations were suspended from 1987 to 1990, and in 2016 for seven years following certain issues like the intervention in Yemen, Iran embassy bombing in Yemen, incidents in 2015 Hajj, the execution of Nimr al-Nimr, the attack on the Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran. However, in March 2023, after discussions brokered by China and Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to reestablish relations.
The Axis of Resistance is an informal Iranian-led political and military coalition in West Asia and North Africa.
Quds Day, officially known as International Quds Day, is an annual pro-Palestinian event held on the last Friday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to express support for Palestinians and oppose Israel and Zionism. It takes its name from the Arabic name for Jerusalem: al-Quds.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaged in an ongoing struggle for influence in the Middle East and other regions of the Muslim world. The two countries have provided varying degrees of support to opposing sides in nearby conflicts, including the civil wars in Syria and Yemen; and disputes in Bahrain, Lebanon, Qatar, and Iraq. The struggle also extends to disputes or broader competition in other countries globally including in West, North and East Africa, South, Central, Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and the Caucasus.
America can't do a damn thing against us is a slogan originally used by the former Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the Iran hostage crisis, for the first time to assure the Iranians that the United States would not be able to restore the ousted Shah of Iran back to the Iranian throne. The statement then became an unofficial slogan for the Iranian Revolution which resulted in the establishment of an Islamic Republic under Khomeini's rule.
The slogan of the Houthi movement, a Shia Islamist political and military organization in Yemen, reads "God Is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam" on a vertical banner of Arabic text. It is often portrayed on a white background, with the written text in red and green colours derived from the flag of Iran; the pro-Islamic statements are coloured green while the statements about the United States, Israel, and the Jewish people are coloured red.
Public protests took place in several cities in Iran beginning on 28 December 2017 and continued into early 2018, sometimes called the Dey protests. The first protest took place in Mashhad, Iran's second-largest city by population, initially focused on the economic policies of the country's government; as protests spread throughout the country, their scope expanded to include political opposition to the theocratic regime of Iran and its longtime Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. The Iranian public showcased their fury in the protests with a wide repertoire of chants aimed at the regime and its leadership. According to The Washington Post, protesters' chants and attacks on government buildings upended a system that had little tolerance for dissent, with some demonstrators even shouting "Death to the dictator!"—referring to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—and asking security forces to join them.
The 2018–2019 Iranian general strikesand protests were a series of strikes and protests that took place across Iran from early 2018 until mid-2019 against the country's economic situation, as well as the Iranian government, as part of the wider Iranian Democracy Movement.
The 2019–2020 Iranian protests, sometimes known as Bloody November or Bloody Aban, were a series of nationwide civil protests in Iran that took place in 2019 and 2020. Initially caused by a 50–200% increase in fuel prices, they occurred as part of the wider Iranian Democracy Movement, leading to calls for the overthrow of the government in Iran and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The protests commenced as peaceful gatherings on the evening of 15 November but spread to 21 cities within hours, as videos of the protest circulated online, eventually becoming the most violent and severe anti-government unrest since the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
The Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 protests were anti-government protests, forming part of the spillover clashes that took place in January 2020 resulting from the crackdown of the 2019 Iranian protests, which swept Iran in January 2020. The protests took place after it was revealed that Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, on the 8th of January 2020.
The phone conversation between Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani took place on September 27, 2013 during Rouhani's trip to New York. The 15-minute telephone conversation was the first communication between the two countries since ties were severed in 1979. Hundreds of international news agencies and newspapers headlined their news coverage by telephone calls from Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani.
This article deals with political slogans of Islamic republic era in Iran.
