The Time

1906: Iran enters its New Constitutional Era. In part to keep apace with the industrializing world, Iran's Qajar Dyanasty (the monarchy since 1794) adopted a new constitution with some western influence including education reform for girls. 

1908: A large quantity of oil is discovered in southwestern Iran; a year later the Anglo-Persian Oil Company goes public in financial partnership with the British.

1925: Reza Shah Pahlavi seizes power, ending the Qajar Dynasty and transitioning The Sublime State of Persia to the Imperial State of Iran.

1936: Pahlavi abolishes the veil (previously allowed but not mandated) in favor of more modern (western) dress.

1941: Pressured by foreign powers (in part due to his German sympathies around the offset of World War II), Pahlavi cedes power to his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who relaxes restrictions on wearing the veil.

1951: Mohammad Mossadegh is elected Prime Minister through his rise with the National Front party. Among his immediate initiatives: nationalizing oil, which increased tensions between Mossedegh, the Shah, and their suporters.

August 1953: The Shah flees Iran to Rome to wait out political violence. But three days later, a British and CIA-backed coup d’etat places Mossadegh under house arrest and restores power to Pahlavi (and oil to private interests). 

January 1963: The Shah's White Revolution passes a referendum on land reform and social modernization including women's right to vote and to serve in public office. While women weren't yet able to participate in this vote, they show up to the polls symbolically. Cleric Ruhollah Khomeini denounces the program as an attack on Islamic values and is exiled to Iraq.

1966: The Women's Organization of Iran was founded to “to raise the cultural, social and economic knowledge of the women of Iran and to make them aware of their family, social and economic rights, duties, and responsibilities."

March 1967: Building from the White Revolution and the work of the WOI, The Family Protection Law is passed. The law established Family Courts and granting women more agency in divorce and child custody.

March 1967: After living out the rest of his life under house arrest, Mohammad Mossadegh dies of cancer in a Tehran hospital and is buried in his livingroom.

1973: The International Oil Crisis results in high prices and economic imbalance in Iran. This pressure further fuels disillusion with the distribution of wealth and resources under the Shah's leadership.

1975: Revisions to the Family Protection Law put heavier restrictions on polygamy; husbands now required both the consent of his first wife and of the courts before taking a second wife.

1977: Protests begin that bridge economic and social concerns; Islam hangs in the periphery as an unassuming answer.

January 1978: Peaceful protesters are killed by the Shah's security forces in Qom, a holy city just south of Tehran.

• August 1978: In Abadan, near the country's southwest border with Iraq, a fire at Rex Cinema claims the lives of around 400 Iranians during a screening of the film Gavaznha (The Deer). The film itself presents a snapshot of life in Iran during the socioeconomic imbalance of the Pahlavi dynasty, and the attack was originally credited to the Shah's SAVAK secret police, which helped to fuel the opposition against him. However, responsibility was ultimately attributed to Islamic revolutionaries (in part a statement against the cinema's western influence). 

• September 1978: The day after the Shah quietly imposed Martial Law, a group of peaceful protesters in Jaleh Square, Tehran, were attacked by the military. Around 100 die and hundreds more are injured, compounding unrest from the Rex Cinema fire and other acts of violence.

• October 1979: Against rising political tension, the Shah orders the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini to leave Iraq. He moves to France.

• January 1979: Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi leaves Iran for Egypt, intending to return once tensions subside.

• February 1979: Ruhollah Khomeini’s returns from exile to Iran where he claims the title of supreme ruler of the new Islamic Republic of Iran, inciting the Islamic Revolution.

• March 1979: Ayatollah Khomeini makes a verbal decree mandating that women wear hijab in public. On March 8th, International Women's Day, Iranian women took to the streets for 6 days of protests, chanting: "we didn't have a revolution to go backwards." 

• April 1979: The Islamic Republic is officially created via public referendum with overwhelming approval (98.2%). Although some popular doubt has been cast on the process, the vote initially positioned the Republic both as Islamic and Democratic.

• June 1979: Khomeini bans music, stating that  “a youth who spends his time listening to music can no longer appreciate realities, just as a drug addict cannot.”

July 1979: In Iraq, President Bakr resigns, making way for Vice President Saddam Hussein to assumes the presidency and consolidates power.

November 1979: A group of Iranian students calling themselves Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam seizes the American embassy, holding 66 Americans hostage. Initially, 13 hostages are released (women and black Americans in "solidarity" with the oppressed), another was later released for health issues. The Hostage Crisis was a response to President Jimmy Carter's admittance of the Shah into the United States to seek medical treatment and the perception of continued collusion in the aftermath of the 1953 coup. In America, Nightline launches on ABC 4 days later with The Iran Crisis—America Held Hostage, an origin of today's 24-hour news cycle. The coverage heralds Iran "a country gone out of control." At the same time, the United States government revoked the visas of all Iranian non-immigrant visitors, suspended all new visas to Iranian citizens, and ordered the deportation of Iranian students without valid visas from the United States.

December 1979: The new constitution is drafted and voted into effect by public referendum, invalidating the 1906 Qajar constitution.

February 1980: The Refugee Act expands the annual number of refugees admitted to the United States and establishes legal processes for so doing.

June 1980: Universities close for Islamization as a part of the broader Cultural Revolution. In a public address on a Nowruz earlier in the year, Ayatollah Khomeini said: "The Islamic Revolution must come to all the universities in Iran in order to purge those academics that are linked either to the West or the East, so that the campuses can become a "clean" environment for teaching the Islamic sciences." This action resulted in an exodus of faculty (like The Shiraz University School of Medicine where 63% of faculty had left the school by 1982 and 41% left the country altogether). While some left on their own, others were expelled and even executed as political rivals.

July 1980: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi succumbs to cancer in Cairo, Egypt, where he is buried.

September 1980: Saddam Hussein invades Iran's western boarder in an attempt to take advantage of the country's post-revolution weakness. The Iran-Iraq War begins under the premise of suppressing a similar such revolution in Iraq, but with evident aims to control oil-rich land and trade routes. The invasion begins in Khorramshahr in the southwest and remains concentrated along the countries' shared border, while missiles target Tehran and other urban areas further inland. The war also prompts a new wave of immigration to America from young men who were eligable for military service.

January 1981: The Hostage Crisis ends 444 days later with the remaining 52 Americans released. Financial negotiations were completed by President Jimmy Carter at the end of his term and the hostages were officially released on Inauguration Day just minutes into the new Reagan Presidency. The embassy is never reopened, and all relations between the two countries thereafter have occurred at the neutral Swiss embassy in Tehran. 

June 1981 - March 1982: Mass Executions result in the deaths of as many as 3,500 people perceived to be "political opponents."

1981/82: Medical schools begin to reopen (before other universities), but they are segregated.

May 1982: Iran liberates Khorramshahr and pushes Iraqi forces back across the boarder.

June 1982: Iran rejects a ceasefire agreement from Iraq.

July 1982: Iran launches counter-offensive military operations on Iraqi territory.

December 1982: Universities begin to reopen at large, with Islamized curriculums (purified and purged of Western and/or Pahlavi influence) and segregated classrooms and social spaces. 

March 1983: The Islamic Penal Code of Iran codifies the Hijab Law (Article 638: women who appear in public without the hijab may be sentenced to prison time or fine). Additional articles codify prison sentences for abortion and death for adultery (for women).

January 1984: Following 1983 attacks on the American Embassy and military barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, the United States designates Iran a "State Sponsors of Terrorism," imposing stricter guidelines on the Iranian-American immigration process.

February 1984: In response to an Iranian aggression, Iraq launches the first "War of the Cities," a systematic and strategic series of missile attacks major urban areas. Iran responded in kind, attacking Baghdad and other areas Iraqi. Subsequent Wars of Cities occurred in March 1985, third in January 1987, fourth in February 1987, and the fifth and final in February 1988. In the later attacks, chemical weapons were also used.

March 1985: The second "War of the Cities."

January & February 1987: The third and fourth "War of the Cities," see news coverage of the attacks.

November 1986: In the United States, the Immigration Reform and Control Act legalized residency on many undocumented immigrants who came to the country prior to 1982, and created new opportunities for their families to immigrate as well. At the same time, the legislation made it illegal it knowingly employ undocumented immigrants. 

February 1988: The fifth and final "War of the Cities" significantly weakens Iranian military morale as Iraq threatens invasion back into the southwest territory.

April 1988: After damaging one of its own ships on an Iranian mine in the Persian Gulf, the United States attacks Iranian navel targets (Operation Praying Mantis).

July 1988: Allegedly mistaken for a military craft, the United States shoots down a commercial Iranian airliner (Iran Air Flight 655) resulting in the deaths of all 290 passengers and crew.

July 1988: Ayatollah Khomeini delivers an order (or fatwa) for the mass executions that resulted in the deaths of as many as 3,500 political prisoners. Karaj's Gohardasht Prison, multiple mass graves have been reported in Karaj. 

August 1988: A permanent ceasefire officially ends the Iran-Iraq War.

1988: In another fatwa, Khomeini relaxes his previous (1979) ban on music, making it: "permissible to listen to music produced by instruments that can be used for licit as well as illicit music."

June 1989: On his death-bead, Ayatollah Khomeini organizes a council to revise the constitution. The council alters the qualifications for Supreme Leader; no longer chosen by "popular acclaim," they name Khomeini's successor then-president Ali Hosseini Khamenei, who is still the Supreme Leader to this day.

August 1989: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is elected president. Amongst his legacies, an era of reform and relaxed religious pressure on universities.

November 1989: The United States releases $567 million in frozen Iranian assets tied to the hostage crisis.

November 1990: In the United States, the Immigration Act of 1965 is revised to expand the annual (non-refugee) immigration cap, provides temporary protected status for asylum-seekers, and creates the new H-1B visas for non-immigrant workers.

December 1991: The United Nations officially names Iraq the aggressor the 8-year War.

January 2002: On the heels of 9/11 in the United States, President George Bush uses the phrase "Axis of Evil" in his State of the Union address, referring to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea (non of whom were responsible for the attacks).

March 2003: The United States invades Iraq and vows to remove Saddam Hussein from power and bring democracy to the entire Middle East.

2005: Ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is elected President following conservative control of Parliament the year prior. Among initiatives, a re-Islamization (or Hard Line era) for universities and education.

2008: Sanaz Toossi's English takes place.

2009: The contested re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparks a wave of protests by people demanding the democracy promised during the 1979 Revolution. The Green Movement persists through 2010.

2019: President Donald Trump threatens strikes against Iran after an American drone is shot down, but ultimately does not carry them out. Sanaz Toossi pens first draft of Wish You Were Here.

January 2020: Donald Trump carries out a strike to assassinate Iranian Military General Qasem Soleimani.

2022: Masha Amini is executed for violating the hijab law atop building restrictions on women's rights including access to abortion and contraception.

December 2022: Time Magazine acknowledges The Women of Iran as Heroes of the Year (associated with the annual Person of the Year title once awarded to Mohammad Mossadegh in 1951 and Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979).

December 2024: The Law on Protecting the Family through the Promotion of the Culture of Chastity and Hijab is passed and then paused three days later. In effect, the law would impose stricter punishment and surveillance of women's adherence to Article 638 of the Iranian Penal Code codified back in 1983. The bill also includes directives for increased gender segregation in public areas (including universities).

2025: American President Donald Trump carries out strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities (and surrounding residential areas) in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.