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Iran: Countries
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According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, SAVAK was instructed in torture techniques by the Agency. Amnesty International summed up the situation in 1976 by noting that Iran had the "highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran."
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Iran's central position has made it a crossroads of migration; the population is not homogeneous, although it has a Persian core that includes over half of the people. Azerbaijanis constitute almost a quarter of the population. The migrant ethnic groups of the mountains and highlands, including the Kurds, Lurs, Qashqai, and Bakhtiari, are of the least mixed descent of the original Iranians. In the northern provinces, Turkic and Tatar influences are evident; Arab strains predominate in the southeast. Iran has a large rural population, found mainly in agrarian villages, although there are nomadic and seminomadic pastoralists throughout the country.
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Known as Persia until 1935, Iran became an Islamic republic in 1979 after the ruling shah was forced into exile. Conservative clerical forces subsequently crushed Americanising, yet ... right wing, influences. Iranian student protestors seized the US Embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979 and held it until 20 January 1981. From 1980 to 1988, Iran fought a bloody, indecisive war with Iraq over disputed territory. Key current issues affecting the country include the pace of accepting outside modernizing influences and reconciliation between clerical control of the regime and popular government participation and widespread demands for reform. Unemployment amongst the young is also an issue, due to Iran having the largest number of young people in the world.
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Nearly all of Iran’s numerous rivers are relatively short, shallow streams unsuitable for navigation. The country’s only navigable river, the Kārūn, flows through the city of Ahvāz in the southwest. Most rivers rise in the mountainous regions and drain into the interior basins. Since ancient times, the region’s inhabitants have used the rivers for irrigation. Dams constructed in the 20th century on the Āb-e Dez, Karkheh, Kārūn, Sefid Rud, and other rivers have expanded the area under irrigation and ... have provided a principal source of hydroelectricity. Three rivers form portions of Iran's international boundaries.
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On June 8, 2005, Iran together with Japan became the first country to qualify for the 2006 World Cup, making it Iran's 3rd appearance on the world stage of football. The qualification round both in 2001 and 2004-05 resulted in mass celebrations, hysteria and rioting, causing internal chaos and unrest between youth and government officials. The Iran versus Japan leg of the 2006 World Cup Qualifiers in Tehran was the highest attended qualifying match among all confederations.
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Excerpt: Iran's chief nuclear envoy said Tuesday his country wants to negotiate over its uranium enrichment program, on the eve of a U.N. Security Council deadline that carries the threat of harsher sanctions...But the officials did not offer what the Security Council is demanding -- an immediate and unconditional stop to enrichment. Iran has long insisted that it will not stop its nuclear activities as a condition for negotiations to start...Iran's senior nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani was even more direct in rejecting an enrichment freeze as a precondition for negotiations in talks with [the International Atomic Energy Agency's] ElBaradei, according to diplomats familiar with the substance of their conversation. The diplomat said Larijani told ElBaradei that Iran could consider an enrichment freeze only as a result of talks -- and not before sitting down at the negotiating table.
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