Iran: Election demonstrations - timeline
Searching more than 75 years of world history
- July 2009. The political crisis over the disputed presidential election flares up again as the powerful cleric and former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, delivers a sermon criticising the repression of protesters claiming the poll was rigged.
- June 2009. President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad is declared to have won a resounding victory in the presidential election, but rival candidates challenge the result, alleging vote-rigging, and opposition supporters take to the streets.
- May 2009. Roxana Saberi, a journalist with dual US-Iranian nationality who had been imprisoned for eight years in April on charges of spying for the USA, is released.
- April 2009. President Ahmadi-Nejad uses his address to a UN conference on racism to condemn the USA and Europe for establishing Israel after World War II.
- March 2009. Adml Mike Mullen, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, announces that Iran has amassed enough fissile material to construct a nuclear bomb.
- February 2009. Iran marks the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution by announcing that it had sent its own satellite into orbit on an Iranian-constructed rocket for the first time.
- January 2009. Newly inaugurated US President Barack Obama extends a hand of peace to Iran in his first formal television interview.
- November 2008. President Ahmadi-Nejad suffers a politically damaging setback when Ali Kordan, the minister of the interior, is impeached by the Majlis.
- March 2008. President Ahmadi-Nejad makes an unprecedented official visit to Iraq.
- March 2008. In elections conservative supporters of President Ahmadi-Nejad maintain control of the Majlis.
- December 2007. A new US intelligence report concludes that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.
- October 2007. The USA announces a raft of unilateral sanctions against Iran, targeting the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) and the country's banking system.
- May 2007. Iranian and US officials hold a rare meeting in Baghdad to discuss the security crisis in Iraq.
- April 2007. Iran releases 15 British sailors and marines captured in March whilst patrolling the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway separating Iran and Iraq.
- March 2007. The UN Security Council strengthens sanctions aimed at forcing Iran to halt all uranium enrichment activities.
- December 2006. The UN Security Council imposes sanctions on Iran for failing halt its uranium enrichment activities.
- April 2006. President Ahmadi-Nejad announces that Iran has successfully enriched uranium for the first time.
- October 2005. President Ahmadi-Nejad creates a sense of outrage in the West by describing Israel as a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the face of the world".
- August 2005. In a letter to the IAEA, the government announces that it is about to resume its uranium enrichment programme.
- June 2005. Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran (the capital), is elected as president, defeating former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a second round run-off.
- November 2004. The government agrees to suspend fully its uranium enrichment programme, a move designed to halt a US-led drive to seek UN sanctions against Iran because of suspicions that it was seeking to build a nuclear weapon.
- February 2004. Conservatives regain control of the Majlis from reformist supporters of President Khatami.
- December 2003. A devastating earthquake in south-eastern Iran destroys the city of Bam and kills at least 26,000 people.
- June 2003. Fresh pro-reform student protests in Tehran receive US backing.
- February 2002. Relations with the USA deteriorate following US President George W. Bush's earlier State of the Union address in which he singles out Iran as part of an "axis of evil", along with North Korea and Iraq.
- May 2000. Reformist supporters of President Khatami win control of the Majlis from conservatives for the first time.
- July 1999. Pro-democracy students at Tehran University demonstrate following the closure of a reformist newspaper; heavy clashes with security forces lead to the arrest of more than 1,000 students.
- May 1997. Reformist Seyyed Mohammed Khatami is elected as president.
- April 1995. US President Bill Clinton announces a total ban on all trade and investment with Iran over the Islamic Republic's alleged links with international terrorism and its rumoured nuclear programme.
- June 1993. Rafsanjani is re-elected for a second term as president.
- August 1989. Arch-pragmatist Hashemi Ali Akbar Rafsanjani is sworn in as the new president.
- June 1989. Ayatollah Khomeini dies at the age of 86; he is replaced as the country's supreme leader by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
- February 1989. Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa exhorting Muslims to assassinate British author, Salman Rushdie, for his novel, The Satanic Verses, considered blasphemous to Islam.
- July 1988. Iran accepts a ceasefire agreement with Iraq following negotiations in Geneva under the aegis of the UN.
- June 1981. Bani-Sadr is removed as president and he later flees to France.
- January 1981. The 52 US hostages who had been held in Tehran for 444 days are released.
- September 1980. Full-scale hostilities break out along major sections of the border between Iran and Iraq after Iraq unilaterally abrogates a 1975 mutual "reconciliation" treaty.
- January 1980. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr is elected as the first president of the Islamic Republic; his government begins work on a major programme of nationalisation.
- November 1979. "Students" storm the US embassy in Tehran, taking the staff as hostage; they demand the extradition of the Shah, in the USA at the time for medical treatment, to face trial in Iran.
- April 1979. The Islamic Republic of Iran is proclaimed following a referendum.
- February 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran from exile in France and receives a tumultuous reception.
- January 1979. The rising wave of popular discontent with the Shah leads to his flight from the country into exile in Egypt.
- September 1978. Following months of riots, strikes, and mass demonstrations, the Shah by now heavily reliant on the SAVAK secret police force imposes martial law.
- October 1977. Student demonstrators opposed to the Shah's reform programme call for the return to Iran of the Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, the Shia Muslim leader who was living in exile in Iraq.
- January 1965. Prime Minister Hassan Ali Mansur is assassinated; he is replaced by Amir Abbas Hoveida, a supporter of the Shah's reform plan.
- January 1963. The Shah's programme of land reform and social and economic modernisation known as the "white revolution" is overwhelmingly approved in a national referendum.
- August 1953. Prime Minister Mossadeq is overthrown in a "Royalist revolt" engineered by the UK and US intelligence services; Gen Fazlollah Zahedi is proclaimed as the new prime minister.
- April 1951. Nationalist Mohammed Mossadeq is appointed as prime minister and the Majlis votes to nationalise the oil industry, which is dominated by the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC); the UK responds by imposing an embargo and a blockade, halting oil exports and damaging the economy.
- March 1951. Gen. Ali Razmara, prime minister since June 1950, is assassinated by a member of the fanatical Fadayian Islam ("devotees of Islam") organisation.
- September 1941. Reza Shah Pahlavi abdicates in favour of his son, 21-year-old Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
- August 1941. The Shah's perceived pro-Axis allegiance in World War II leads to the Anglo-Russian occupation of Iran
- December 1934. The Persian government decrees that from March 21, 1935 the Persian New Year the name of the country is to be changed into "Iran".
