1906 First constitution is adopted.
1907 Oil is discovered in southwest Iran.
1925 Shah Reza Khan Pahlavi begins modernization plan.
1941 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi becomes shah.
1956 Government launches seven-year development plan.
1960 Iran helps form Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
1963 Shah begins "White Revolution” reform program.
1963 Women are given vote.
1964 Shah bans Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini from country.
1971 Iran celebrates 2,500-year anniversary of Persian Empire.
1975 (June 13) Iraq and Iran sign treaty to avoid larger war.
1979 (Jan. 16) Shah flees Iran after months of protests against his regime.
1979 (Jan. 31) Khomeini returns to Iran and establishes Islamic Republic.
1979 (Nov. 4) Student protesters occupy U. S. embassy in Tehran, taking many American hostages.
1980 (Sept. 22) Iraqi troops enter Iran, beginning Iran-Iraq War.
1981 (Jan. 20) Iran releases hostages taken in American embassy on day that Ronald Reagan is inaugurated president of United States.
1982 (May 24) Iran recaptures port city of Khorramshahr from Iraq.
1983 (Apr. 18) Radical Iranians claim responsibility for bomb blasts at U. S. embassy in Beirut.
1987 (Nov. 1) Leaders of Arab nations announce support of Iraq in Iran-Iraq War.
1988 (Mar. 11) Iraqis use mustard and cyanide gases against Iranians at Halabjah.
1988 (June 13) Bloody battle is fought at Basra, where Iran attacks Iraqi oilfields.
1988 (Aug. 20) Truce is declared in Iran-Iraq War.
1989 (July 3) Khomeini dies.
Khomeini returned to Iran to set up a government based on the principle of Velayat-e-faghih, which states that government should be based on clerical jurisprudence. In such a government the ultimate authority rests with members of the clergy.
On February 14,1979, shortly after Khomeini's return to Iran, Iranian students entered the U. S. embassy in Tehran and took one hundred Americans hostage. Within a few hours some of Khomeini's followers persuaded the students to release the hos-
1989 (July 29) Hashemi Rafsanjani is elected executive president of Iran.
1997-1998 Iranian troops and Taliban militiamen skirmish along Iran-Afghanistan border.
1997 (May) Mohammed Khatami, a moderate, is elected executive president of Iran.
1997 (Dec.) Islamic Conference Organization Summit is held in Tehran.
1998 (Jan.) President Mohammed Khatami expresses regret for Iran's taking of U. S. hostages in 1979 and calls for closer cultural ties between Iran and United States.
1998 (Jan.) President Khatami urges dialogue between Iranian and American peoples.
1998 (Aug.) Five thousand civilians, including eight Iranian diplomats and one
Journalist, are killed at Mazar-i-sharif, with Iranian government charging Taliban responsibility.
1998 (Sept.) Government promises not to support Khomeini's 1989 call for British
Author Salman Rushdie's death.
1998 (Sept. 22) Iran places more than 200,000 troops along Afghanistan border in
Retaliation against Taliban massacre of Iranians in August.
1998 (Nov. 4) Government celebrates tenth anniversary of takeover of U. S. embassy, inviting former hostages to attend as Iran's guests.
1999 (Mar. 11) President Khatami has private audience with Pope Paul II at Vatican during tour of Western Europe designed to improve Iran's ties with the West.
2000 (Feb.) Supporters of President Khatami gain strength in national elections.
2001 (Jan. 13) Revolutionary Court sentences ten reformers to jail terms and fines for taking part in an international conference in Berlin.
2001 (Aug.) United Nations special representative Maurice Copithorne issues a report
Testifying that the 300,000 Baha'is remaining in Iran continued to experience discrimination from the Iranian government in virtually all areas of life.
2001 (Dec.) U. N. resolution calls on Iran to cease religious discrimination.
2002 Iran declares its opposition to American intervention in neighboring Iraq.
2003 (Feb. 15) Iran's Revolutionary Guards renew the death sentence on British author Salman Rushdie renounced by the Iranian government in 1998.
Iranians demonstrate in front of the U. S. embassy in Tehran shortly after its occupation by students in November, 1979. (Library of Congress)
Tages. However, on November 4,1979, students again seized the embassy, taking all Americans who were there hostage and demanding the return of the shah and his riches to Iran. Khomeini's followers supported the seizure and called for the cutting of ties with the United States.
Eventually the students held fifty-two of the Americans hostage for 444 days, finally releasing them on January 20,1981, the same day that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president of the United States. During the fourteen months that the hostages were held, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran.
During the hostage crisis, the United States stopped importing Iranian oil and froze Iranian assets in American banks. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered the release of the hostages, but the government of Iran responded that the court had no jurisdiction over them.
Meanwhile, in 1980, the shah of Iran died of cancer after shuttling from country to country trying to find a place of asylum. In November, 1980, Jimmy Carter lost his bid for a second term and
Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States, in part because Carter had failed to solve the hostage situation. Also, by the time the hostages were released, Iran had become engaged in a war with Iraq that would last eight years and contribute to economic problems for both countries. By the early twenty-first century, diplomatic relations had still not been restored between the U. S. and Iran.
World History
