On January 9, 2021, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded accountability from Iran for the accidental downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 one year prior. He accused Iran of shielding the Revolutionary Guards from culpability. “Iran’s own investigation revealed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shot down the plane with two surface-to-air missiles,” he said. “Yet, a year later, members of the IRGC have yet to be held accountable for taking the lives of 176 innocent civilian passengers and crew onboard.” 

Of all the pressing issues in the volatile Middle East—wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya, unstable Iraq, imploding Lebanon, and the 10,000 ISIS fighters and other al-Qaida franchises still on the loose—the most pressing for President-elect Joe Biden will be Iran’s controversial nuclear program. He has repeatedly promised to rejoin the nuclear deal, brokered by the world’s six major powers in 2015, which Donald Trump pulled out of in 2018.

On January 4, Iran resumed enriching uranium to 20 percent at an underground nuclear facility, a major breach of the 2015 nuclear deal. The landmark agreement, negotiated between Iran and six major world powers, stipulated that Tehran could only enrich uranium to 3.67 percent. It also banned uranium enrichment at Fordo – a facility built deep inside a mountain to protect it from a military strike – until 2031.

In 2020, Iran began shipping fuel to Venezuela, its closest ally in Latin America. Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves. But years of government mismanagement and U.S. sanctions on its oil industry have left its refineries in disrepair. Caracas faced gas shortages and widespread blackouts as a result.

In November 2020, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif traveled to Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia. The three countries shared Iran's anti-Americanism and sought deeper bilateral relations with Tehran. On November 5, Zarif met with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and other government officials in Caracas. "[This] visit ratifies the unshakeable spirit of the strategic relations of cooperation and solidarity between Iran and Venezuela," Maduro tweeted after the meeting.

For Iran, 2020 was a particularly tumultuous year. It faced unprecedented economic challenges from tightening U.S. sanctions, a major political transition after a parliamentary election, and a health crisis that killed tens of thousands. It also marked the last full year of President Hassan Rouhani’s presidency, with hardliners jockeying to succeed him by exploiting the failure in his diplomacy with the United States. The headlines of 2020 included:

Since the 1979 revolution, the status of women in Iran has improved significantly in the fields of education and literacy, the labor force and lifespan. The number of women in parliament has quadrupled. But the gains are uneven. Women, for example, are still a distinct minority in top government positions and management jobs. The following are key statistics covering the end of the monarchy through four decades of the Islamic Republic.

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On December 3, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned an Iranian firm, Shahid Meisami Group, and its director for chemical weapons research. The group was responsible for projects worth millions of dollars that included testing and producing chemical agents.

The assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on November 27 generated significant fallout in the wider Middle East and in the West. It heightened fears of retaliation and kinetic tensions in the region. The United States pulled back its diplomatic presence in Iraq. And the Iranian parliament passed a law requiring an escalation in production of enriched uranium, the fuel for a nuclear weapon and peaceful energy. The moves included: 

On November 27, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent nuclear scientist, was assassinated in a roadside attack about 40 miles east of Tehran. He was the fifth nuclear scientist killed since 2010. Iran usually blamed Israel, sometimes invoking the United States and often their local agents. Historically, Israel has not claimed responsibility for assassinations. But both countries have reportedly waged a covert campaign to sabotage Iran’s controversial nuclear program.