This chapter outlines the history of the 30 years between the Iranian Revolution of 1978‒1979 and the Green Uprisings of 2009, and contextualizes specific days of action that took place in 2009. For example, a brief history of the 1979 US embassy seizure is given to explain the political importance of the Green activists’ day of protest in 2009, when the 30th anniversary of the embassy seizure was used to denounce the Islamic government and its foreign backers. Other subjects covered in the chapter include the post-revolutionary power struggle, the Iran‒Iraq War and its conclusion, the export of the Iranian Revolution, the baby boom, the educational reforms that were designed to create the new Islamist citizen, gender politics, and the reconstruction years when Iran embarked on a period of privatization and development. The chapter explains how the radicals who were ousted from power later returned as reformists in the late 1990s, which prompted a conservative backlash in the form of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, followed in turn by a backlash against the conservatives in 2009 with the candidacy of Mir Hussein Mousavi.

The ʿAshura protests of 2009 also warrant their own chapter because of the profound meaning with which history infused them. The chapter presents a case study of post-Islamism in the person of Ayatollah Montazeri, who was originally an architect of the Islamic system but had become one of its severest critics. After a period of trial and error, the goal of the post-Islamist trend had become to save Islam from the state by fusing it with plurality and rights instead of dogmatism and duties. Montazeri died in December 2009—six months after the initial uprising—by which time repression by the state had either radicalized protesters or suppressed more moderate voices. The seventh day of mourning for his death fell on ‘Ashura 2009, and the ensuing day of action fused the two events, drawing on both the Iranian Revolution and wider Islamic history to imbue the protests with particular meaning.