Iran is a vast, resource-rich and ethnically diverse Muslim-majority nation that has been governed as an Islamic republic since the 1979 revolution. The uprising overthrew the monarchy and brought clerics to power under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The revolution ended the rule of the Shah, whose programme of rapid modernisation and Westernisation, combined with the harsh suppression of dissent, had alienated key religious, political and popular constituencies.
