For nearly two weeks last July, political protests and violent clashes between reform-minded students and conservative-backed security forces in Iran dominated international news. Twenty years after Iran's Islamic Revolution, fault lines have emerged in Iranian society and politics.

The election of Mohammed Khatami, a moderate reformist, as president of Iran two years ago surprised the world, but as the current special expanded issue of Middle East Report (Fall 1999, No. 212) makes clear, Khatami's land-slide election marked not a sudden change in direction, but rather expressed a broad-based and growing desire for change and political liberalization in Iran

This special, issue, "Pushing the Limits: Iran's Islamic Revolution at Twenty," was compiled by writers in Tehran, Paris, Cairo and the US and contains incisive analyses of the profound demographic and sociocultural changes that have taken place in Iran since 1979.

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