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| - Here are key events that have marked Iran since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy and brought in an Islamic republic. On January 16, 1979, the US-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, leaves for exile after months of protests. On February 1, revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini makes a triumphant return from exile. The shah's government falls 10 days later, with public radio declaring "the end of 2,500 years of despotism". An Islamic republic is proclaimed on April 1. On November 4 radical students take 52 Americans hostage at the US embassy in Tehran to protest the ex-shah's admission to hospital in the United States. Washington severs diplomatic relations in 1980. The hostages are freed on January 21, 1981, after 444 days in captivity. On September 22 Iraq invades Iran after its president, Saddam Hussein, tears up a 1975 treaty on the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway. It triggers an eight-year war that is widely estimated to have cost the lives of up to 700,000 people. It ends on August 20, 1988 with a UN-brokered ceasefire. Khomeini dies on June 3 and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, president since October 1981, becomes supreme leader. Moderate conservative Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is elected president. Re-elected in 1993, he orchestrates a relative opening up of the government and post-war reconstruction. Rafsanjani's reformist successor, Mohammad Khatami, runs up against conservative opposition during his two terms from 1997 to 2005. In July 1999, the government faces the biggest protests since 1979, with students who back Khatami clashing with police. On January 29 US president George W. Bush names Iran as part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea, accusing it of supporting terrorism. On June 25 hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is elected president. During his tenure, Iran resumes uranium enrichment, alarming the West, which suspects it of wanting to produce a nuclear weapon. A crackdown on nationwide protests against his disputed re-election in 2009 negatively impacts the reformist movement. The election of moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani on June 15, 2013, marks a warming of relations with Washington and the rest of the world. An accord on Iran's nuclear programme is reached with world powers, including the United States, on July 14, 2015, after 21 months of negotiations. It gives Tehran relief from crippling economic sanctions in exchange for limits on its nuclear programme. In January Iran's regional rival Saudi Arabia and its allies cut or scale back relations, following a crisis prompted by the Sunni kingdom's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric. On May 8 US President Donald Trump abandons the 2015 nuclear deal and begins reimposing unilateral sanctions on Iran. A year later Tehran begins gradually stepping back from its own commitments under the deal. In June Iran says it shot down a US drone which violated Iranian airspace. Washington says the drone was in international airspace and Trump approves a retaliatory strike, but cancels it at the last minute. On January 3, 2020, a US strike kills prominent Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq. Five days later, Iran launches a volley of missiles at US troops stationed in Iraq. Trump refrains from hitting back, pulling the arch foes back from the brink of a direct conflict for the second time in seven months. acm-eab/jmy/cm
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