Post Revolution Iran

The Iranian people today live under an oppressive authoritarian regime that imposes a narrow interpretation of Islamic governance across the country. Since 1979, the clerical regime has strengthened its stranglehold on almost every sphere of Iranian peoples’ lives. The first phase of the revolution lasted from 1979 -1989 until the ayatollah’s death. This tumultuous period included killing off supporters of the previous regime, taking foreign hostages and fostering its zealotry across the Islamic world. This phase also saw an eight year conflict with Iraq that proved to be the Middle East’s bloodiest modern conflict. The second phase from 1989 – 1997 was a subtle transition from a hardcore theocratic set-up to conservative realism. The third phase between 1997-2005 coincided with the era of reformist President Mohammad Khatami. The fourth phase began with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President in 2005 until his departure in 2013. This era witnessed the emergence of peoples’ disillusionment with politics and popular protests in 2009. Iran in 2013 entered the fifth phase after the revolution. …show more content…
This remained true in the post-revolution Iran as well. In 1979, the number of students in Iran’s Universities numbered about 175,000. This number shot up to 1.25 million students in the early 1990s. The drastic increase of both men and most notably women attending university in the post Khomeini death period, added to an intensifying atmosphere of new expectations for democracy, civil rights and pragmatism. This generation rebelled in many ways from the revolutionary Islamic ideology, disapproving the government’s moral police and turning to prostitution, drugs and a wide-spread refusal to participate in religious practice; all means of escaping what they believed to be a hopeless political and social