The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, formerly the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1969, consisting of 57 member states, with 48 being Muslim-majority countries. The organisation states that it is "the collective voice of the Muslim world" and works to "safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony".
The foreign relations of Iran are the economic and diplomatic relationships between the Iranian government and governments of other countries. Geography is a very significant factor in informing Iran's foreign policy. Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the newly formed Islamic Republic, under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, dramatically reversed the pro-American foreign policy of the last Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Since then the country's policies have oscillated between the two opposing tendencies of revolutionary ardour to eliminate Western and non-Muslim influences while promoting the Islamic revolution abroad, and pragmatism, which would advance economic development and normalization of relations. Iran's bilateral dealings are accordingly sometimes confused and contradictory.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a Eurasian political, economic, International security and defence organization. It is the world's largest regional organization in terms of geographic scope and population, covering approximately 60% of the area of Eurasia, 40% of the world population, and more than 30% of global GDP.
Sayyid Mohammad Khatami is an Iranian reformist politician who served as the fifth president of Iran from 3 August 1997 to 3 August 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture from 1982 to 1992. Later, he was critical of the government of subsequent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
On November 4, 1979, 52 United States diplomats and citizens were held hostage after a group of militarized Iranian college students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took them as hostages. A diplomatic standoff ensued. The hostages were held for 444 days, being released on January 20, 1981.
The Iranian Embassy siege took place from 30 April to 5 May 1980, after a group of six armed men stormed the Iranian embassy on Prince's Gate in South Kensington, London. The gunmen, Iranian Arabs campaigning for sovereignty of Khuzestan Province, took 26 people hostage, including embassy staff, several visitors, and a police officer who had been guarding the embassy. They demanded the release of prisoners in Khuzestan and their own safe passage out of the United Kingdom. The British government quickly decided that safe passage would not be granted and a siege ensued. Subsequently, police negotiators secured the release of five hostages in exchange for minor concessions, such as the broadcasting of the hostage-takers' demands on British television.
The Peace Research Institute Oslo is a private research institution in peace and conflict studies, based in Oslo, Norway, with around 100 employees. It was founded in 1959 by a group of Norwegian researchers led by Johan Galtung, who was also the institute's first director (1959–1969). It publishes the Journal of Peace Research, also founded by Johan Galtung.
Masoumeh Ebtekar was the former Vice President of Iran for Women and Family Affairs, from August 9, 2017, to September 1, 2021. She previously headed Department of Environment from 1997 to 2005, making her the first female member in the cabinet of Iran since 1979 and the third in history. She held the same level of office from 2013 to 2017. She is a full professor at Tarbiat Modares University in the School of Medical Sciences, Immunology Department.
French–Iranian relations are the international relations between France and Iran. Iran has generally enjoyed a friendly relationship with France since the Middle Ages. The travels of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier are particularly well known to Safavid Persia. France has an embassy in Tehran and Iran has an embassy in Paris.
Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian philosopher and academic based in Toronto, Canada.
Mohammad Khatami was elected as the President of Iran in 1997 after having based his campaign on a reform program promising implementation of a democratic and more tolerant society, the rule of law and improvement of social rights. After taking office, Khatami faced fierce opposition from his powerful opponents within the unelected institutions of the state which he had no legal power over, and this led to repeated clashes between his government and these institutions. After 8 years of presidency, he is widely considered to have lost the power struggle with his opponents. Many of his supporters have grown disillusioned with him and the reform programs that he was associated with.
Hossein Alikhani was an Iranian NGO founder, political scientist and author who was abducted in a sting operation by undercover United States Customs Service agents in 1992, and released after being held for 130 days.
The Elders is an international non-governmental organisation of public figures noted as senior statesmen, peace activists and human rights advocates, who were brought together by Nelson Mandela in 2007. They describe themselves as "independent global leaders working together for peace and human rights". The goal Mandela set for The Elders was to use their "almost 1,000 years of collective experience" to work on solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems such as climate change, HIV/AIDS, and poverty, as well as to "use their political independence to help resolve some of the world's most intractable conflicts".
On June 29, 2005, shortly after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the Iranian presidential election, several major news outlets publicized allegations that he gunned down several Americans in the 1979–1981 Iran Hostage Crisis.
Iran and Saudi Arabia have had no diplomatic relations following the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran in January 2016 after Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shia cleric. Bilateral relations between the countries have been strained over several geopolitical issues such as the interpretations of Islam, aspirations for leadership of the Islamic world, oil export policy and relations with the United States and other Western countries.
Canada and Iran have had no formal diplomatic relations since 2012. In the absence of diplomatic representation, Italy acts as the protecting power for Canada in Iran and Switzerland acts as Iran's protecting power in Canada.
The International Centre for Policy Studies (ICPS) is an independent NGO, founded in 1994 which aims to promote public policy concepts and practice and apply them to influential policy research that affects both the public and private sectors in Ukraine.
The Iran hostage crisis negotiations were negotiations in 1980 and 1981 between the United States Government and the Iranian Government to end the Iranian hostage crisis. The 52 American hostages, seized from the US Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, were finally released on 20 January 1981. A detailed account of the hostage crisis and the Algiers Accords is found in American Hostages In Iran: The Conduct of a Crisis [Yale 1985] put together by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Iran–Qatar relations refer to the bilateral relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the State of Qatar. Iran has an embassy in Doha while Qatar has an embassy in Tehran. Qatar and Iran have close ties.
In 2016, the BBC published a report which stated that the administration of United States President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981) had extensive contact with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his entourage in the prelude to the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The report was based on "newly declassified US diplomatic cables". According to the report, as mentioned by The Guardian, Khomeini "went to great lengths to ensure the Americans would not jeopardise his plans to return to Iran - and even personally wrote to US officials" and assured them not to worry about their interests in Iran, particularly oil. According to the report, in turn, Carter and his administration helped Khomeini and made sure that the Imperial Iranian army would not launch a military coup.
