Iran FAQ: What You Should Know

Heir to a 2,500-year-old civilization, Iran today stands at a historic crossroads. The very survival of the Islamic Republic that has brutalized the country since the Islamic Revolution overthrew a pro-Western, secular monarchy in 1979 is at stake.

Iran simultaneously faces economic meltdown, weakened regional influence, nationwide protests prompting President Donald Trump to pledge support for regime opponents, a crippled nuclear program, and military threats on its still formidable arsenal of ballistic missiles and other long-range strike systems.

The present confrontation between the United States and Iran, rooted in the Islamic Republic’s hatred of America as a decadent, imperial power, is the culmination of nearly half a century of enmity that has killed hundreds of Americans. Trump now holds significant leverage to shape the outcome.

The confrontation is not with the Iranian nation but rather with its rulers. Iran is the home of the region’s most anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Israeli regime and its most pro-American, pro-Western, and pro-Israeli population.

With up to 80 percent of Iranian citizens wanting an end to the regime, the big question now is whether, combined with protests, targeted U.S. military action can push Iran’s current rulers over the edge.

Q: What are the basic facts about Iran?

• The Islamic Republic of Iran is an authoritarian and Islamist regime that was established in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a formerly exiled cleric. Khomeini was at the helm of a revolutionary movement that replaced a pro-Western and modernizing monarchy with a rigid theocracy that continues to promote anti-Americanism, antisemitism, and gender apartheid at home and abroad.
• Iran’s landmass covers 1.65 million square miles at the crossroads of the Middle East and Central Asia, with a population of 92 million and its capital in Tehran.
• The Islamic Republic is the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism and has spawned or supported a variety of terrorist groups across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militia groups in Iraq, al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and Hamas in Gaza.
• Iran forms one leg of an emerging “Axis of Aggressors” alongside Russia, China, and North Korea. The four authoritarian regimes coordinate to challenge U.S. power through arms transfers, sanctions evasion, military exercises, and joint efforts to reshape the global order. Iran sells oil to China and has been a critical weapons supplier to Russia throughout the Ukraine war, providing both finished drones and the technology for mass production. Iran has also received material support for its military programs from these countries and is in talks to procure more.
• The official/state faith of Iran is Islam (of the Twelver Shiite sect), but the country’s population is highly secular and nationalist, with polls indicating less than 40 percent of Iranians identify as Muslim. The official language is Persian, but Iran is only 51-64 percent Persian and ethnically and linguistically diverse.
• Iran’s primary export is oil, alongside petrochemicals and base metals, and the United States has banned these from international markets. Despite these sanctions, Iran exported an average of 1.5-1.66 million barrels per day in 2025, peaking at roughly 2.15 million barrels per day in October 2025.

Q: Did the January 2026 protests stem from a single trigger?

• Iran’s protest waves over the years have had different triggers, but the accumulation of overlapping grievances has defined each movement. The ongoing wave, as well as the 2017 and 2019 protests, had economic triggers, the 2022 unrest centered on women’s rights, while earlier waves in 1999 and 2009 were driven by political demands. In each case, the unrest did not remain confined to the initial spark; broader grievances converged and evolved into calls for regime change rather than narrow policy reform.
• Iran faced sharp economic contraction, inflation of nearly 50 percent, and food prices rising 60 to 70 percent in late 2025. Within one year, the rial fell from about 807,000 to 1.43 million per dollar on the free market.
• In the final six months of 2025 alone, at least 60 environmental crises were documented, including drought, dust storms, wildfires, air pollution, desertification, land subsidence, and depleted reservoirs.
• In summer 2025, rolling blackouts became routine, with scheduled two-hour cuts twice daily in some neighborhoods three days a week, often striking without warning and disrupting homes, shops, and factories.
• Following the 12-Day War, regime authorities arrested 21,000 people simply for social media posts. By the end of the year, the regime carried out roughly 1,500 executions, nearly double the 975 recorded in 2024.

Q: Why do Iranians oppose the Islamic Republic?

• The Islamic Republic was founded on Islamist principles and has acted at home and abroad in a manner deemed by large swaths of the Iranian population as not reflective of Iranian national interests. Specifically, it has prioritized funding terrorism and advancing its nuclear and missile programs over the welfare of its own people. Most Iranians view the regime not as their government but rather as an occupying Islamist force seeking to eradicate Iranian identity.
• The Islamic Republic has brutally repressed Iranians. The regime ranks second in executions carried out annually and is the world’s highest executioner per capita. It also deploys Iraqi, Lebanese, and Afghan proxy forces to suppress protests at home, with these groups reportedly helping enable the killing of an estimated 36,000 to 43,000 unarmed protesters in January.
• Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ruled Iran since 1989, making him the modern Middle East’s longest-serving dictator. As “supreme leader,” a position created to enshrine clerical control, he commands the military and oversees key vetting bodies that control who can run for office, ensuring elections are neither free nor fair.
• Internal dissent is crushed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and a host of other domestic security forces like the Basij — an all-volunteer paramilitary. The IRGC is Khamenei’s primary security apparatus for suppressing opposition and projecting force across the Middle East. The IRGC is a designated terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, Canada, and Australia.
• The theocratic regime treats Iran’s religious minorities as second-class citizens and is designated by the United States as a Country of Particular Concern regarding religious freedom. Authorities exploit and oppress Iran’s Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Bahai communities as scapegoats.

Q: Why are the U.S. and its allies opposed to Iran’s nuclear program?

• Regime officials have routinely threatened nuclear weaponization, with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reporting in 2025 that it is no longer able to verify whether Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful.
• Iran is one of six countries in the world that can domestically enrich uranium — the fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon. From April 2021 to June 2025, it was the only country in the world enriching uranium to 60 percent purity. Prior to Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s breakout capacity could produce enough fissile material for 10 weapons in one month and 17 weapons in four months.
• Deals have not prevented Tehran from enriching uranium in secret sites. Following the 2015 JCPOA, the IAEA found undeclared uranium traces at Turquzabad and Varamin and investigated past explosives-related activity at Marivan. None of these sites was declared under the 2015 agreement.
• Intelligence estimates underpin these fears; recent satellite images show Iran undertaking extensive reconstruction work at its Taleghan 2 facility, where nuclear weapons research has been carried out, after it was badly damaged in the combined airstrikes on its nuclear and military sites in June 2025.
• Following the June 2025 airstrikes by Israel and the United States, Iran is believed to have approximately 440 kg of uranium at 60 percent purity entombed in its facilities.
• Iran insists it will never surrender its claimed “right to enrich” — the framework that provides a pathway for domestic weapons production. No such right exists under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Q: How dangerous is Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal?

• Iran possesses the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East — an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 missiles capable of reaching U.S. military bases throughout the region, as well as allies like Israel and Arab states.
• Iran is the only country without nuclear weapons to have first produced a 2,000-km-range ballistic missile. It has also targeted nuclear-armed states with ballistic missiles, having done so four times without first having produced nuclear weapons itself — against Pakistan in January 2024 and against Israel in April 2024, October 2024, and June 2025.
• Despite adhering to a self-imposed range cap of 2,000 km, Iran has a space program that allows it a pathway toward developing intermediate-range systems capable of targeting the European continent and puts it on the pathway to developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability to target the U.S. homeland. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assesses that Iran will possess more ICBMs than North Korea by 2035.
• Iran refuses to include its ballistic missile capability as a subject for current negotiations with the United States.

Q: How extensive is Iran’s support for terrorist groups?

• Iran has long been identified by the United States and other countries as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism. Iran provides the majority of arms, training, funding, and guidance to its terrorist proxies, in violation of binding UN Security Council resolutions, and has avoided ratifying in full international counterterrorism finance regulations.
• Through the IRGC’s Quds Force, Tehran has sought to export the 1979 Islamic Revolution by creating groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shiite militias in Iraq while coopting others, including Hamas and the Houthis, providing arms, training, funding, and guidance to what it terms the “Axis of Resistance.” Although al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban are not technically under this umbrella, Tehran has financed, armed, and trained both throughout the years. These groups receive Iranian funding and direction and are united with Tehran in countering U.S. and Israeli influence through coordinated attacks and arms transfers.
• Iran has plotted bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia — including foiled plots targeting President Trump.
• Since the brutal Iran-backed October 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel, both the United States and Israel have degraded Iran’s proxies’ military force. However, these proxies retain offensive and disruptive military capabilities and are poised to rebuild should outside pressure subside.

Behnam Ben Taleblu is senior director of the Iran Program and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Janatan Sayeh is a research analyst. For more analysis from the authors and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow Behnam and Janatan on X @therealBehnamBT and @JanatanSayeh. Follow FDD on X @FDD and @FDD_Iran. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.