Iran

In the elections of 1992 and 1996, the support of the 4th President of Iran Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's increased, but he failed to run for a third term. At the presidential election of 1997, Mohammad Khatami, Rafsanjani's cultural adviser, succeeded him. Khatami promised greater freedom and tolerance and was supported mainly by women, younger voters, and intellectuals.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former mayor of the capital, Tehran, and famous for his conservative approach and for rolling back reforms put in place by modernists before him, was elected president in June 2005. He has not been shy of confronting the West and has pushed ahead with a national nuclear program that has brought international condemnation.

In June 2013, Iranians elected a moderate conservative cleric Hassan Rouhani to the presidency. He is a longtime senior member in the regime but has made promises of reforming society and Iran's foreign policy. The UN Security Council has passed a number of resolutions calling for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities and comply with its IAEA obligations and responsibilities. In July 2015, Iran and the five permanent members, plus Germany (P5+1), signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) under which Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. On 8 May 2018, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Despite the withdrawal of the USA, the JCPOA remains in force; it is a multilateral agreement to which seven of the original eight parties still agree. Following the US withdrawal from the deal was a military 'tit-for-tat' exchange between Iran and the White House administration that culminated in the execution by the US of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Quds Force, and the (inadvertently) shooting down of a Ukrainian plane by Iran's military.
(Source: CIA World Fact Book; IRIN)