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10 Things You Might Not Know About Iran
10 things you might not know about Iran
The confrontation between the United States and Iran seems to grow more bitter every day. Last week, Iran defied a United Nations deadline to stop enriching uranium, which the U.S. claims is part of an Iranian program to build nuclear weapons. The U.S. also accuses Iran of supplying sophisticated bombs to kill American soldiers in Iraq. A second U.S. carrier battle group arrived in the region last week, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates insists that "we have no intention of attacking Iran." Unintentional things can happen, however, when countries call each other the "Great Satan" or consider one another to be part of an "axis of evil." As the crisis intensifies, here's a quick look at Iran, a land of remarkable contradictions.
1. Iran is a major exporter of crude oil, but it has to import gasoline because of its limited refinery capability. This shortcoming would make Iran particularly vulnerable to any blockade.
2. The CIA helped overthrow Iran's democratically elected government and installed a dictator in 1953. The joint U.S.-British covert action known as Operation Ajax turned Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh into a political prisoner and led to decades of repression, torture and assassination under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
3. Barely half of Iranians--58 percent--speak the official language, Farsi, or a dialect of Farsi as their primary language. Iran has sizable and sometimes restive minorities, including Azeris and Kurds. (And while we're talking about ethnic groups, let's remember that Iran is not an Arab nation.)
4. Iran's fundamentalist Islamic leaders have a well-earned reputation as repressors of women's rights, imposing strictures on how women dress and even a ban on women attending soccer matches. But more than half the country's university students are women, and female literacy is relatively high: 73 percent, compared with 24 percent in Iraq, 47 percent in Egypt and 48 percent in India.
5. Although white-bearded clerics are familiar symbols of Iran, the nation's young people may be as powerful a force. Two-thirds of Iran's population is younger than 30. (In the U.S., the median age is 36.2 and climbing.) Until last month, 15-year-old Iranians could vote. The age limit was raised to 18 after elections embarrassing to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
6. Iran, whose president has called for the destruction of Israel, has the second-highest Jewish population in the Middle East. (Israel, of course, is first.) Ahmadinejad has expressed support for Iran's 25,000 Jews by donating money to the Jewish hospital in Tehran. But his extreme statements about Israel and the Holocaust have made him a loathed figure in many quarters. Long ago, another Iranian leader was a hero to the Jewish people: Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon (in present-day Iraq) in 539 B.C. and freed the Israelites from slavery.
7. The ancient Iranians (also known as Persians) were pioneers in mathematics and architecture. The world's first windmills were created in Iran, as was one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions, Zoroastrianism.
8. Possession of 30 grams or more of heroin is punishable by death in Iran. Still, the country has one of the highest heroin addiction rates in the world. An estimated 2 million Iranians, in a population of 70 million, use heroin or opium. (It is next door to the world's leading opium producer, Afghanistan.)
9. Satellite dishes are common in Iran despite an official ban and sporadic roundups. Oprah Winfrey's show is especially popular. Dozens of unauthorized television and radio stations beam their signals into Iran, a few of them funded by the U.S. and many of them based in Los Angeles, where the large Iranian community is nicknamed "Tehrangeles."
10. In past visits, Tribune correspondents have found that Iranians generally like Americans. After chanting "Death to America" at Friday prayers, a group of Iranian women asked a Tribune correspondent where she was from. When told America, one woman said, "Oh, we didn't mean you. It's just something we say." Another woman gave our correspondent an apple.
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