Jimmy Carter is celebrating his 95th birthday, becoming the first U.S. president to reach that milestone as he continues his humanitarian work and occasionally wades back into politics and policy debates almost four decades after leaving office.
Carter, who served from 1977-1981 and still lives in tiny Plains, Georgia, planned no public celebrations on Tuesday.
The 39th president, born in 1924 and raised during the Great Depression, has slowed physically in recent years, acknowledging recently that he has trouble walking after hip replacement surgery in May. But he remains active with programs at the post-presidency center he and Rosalynn Carter opened in Atlanta in 1982. He still teaches Sunday School at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains. The Carters plan to travel later this week to Nashville, Tennessee, where they will help build houses for Habitat for Humanity.
FILE - In this Sept. 18, 2018 file photo, former President Jimmy Carter answers questions from students during his annual town hall with Emory University freshman in the campus gym in Atlanta. Carter turns 95 on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2019. (Curtis ComptonAtlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)
Carter survived a dire cancer diagnosis in 2015 and became the longest-lived U.S. president in history this spring, surpassing George H.W. Bush, who died in 2018. Rosalynn Carter, now 92, is among the longest-lived first ladies. The couple has been married 73 years.
In recent public appearances, the former president has sounded like a man still intent on securing his legacy, amplifying his criticisms of American military spending and war, blasting the proliferation of money in U.S. politics and urging action to combat the climate crisis. And he's expressed particular pride that the U.S. engaged in no foreign wars during his tenure.
"I just want to keep the whole world at peace," Carter said in September during his annual Carter Center report.
FILE- In this Sept. 30, 2018 file photo, former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter are seen ahead of an NFL football game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Cincinnati Bengals, in Atlanta. Former President Carter turns 95 on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2019. (AP PhotoJohn Amis, File)
"We have been at war more than 226 years. We have been at peace for about 16 years," he said of the U.S. since the Declaration of Independence in 1776. He asserted that every U.S. military conflict from the Korean War onward has been a war of "choice."
"The United States is very deeply inclined to go to war," Carter said, partly as "a mechanism by which we can implant American policies ... in other countries." A Naval Academy graduate and World War II veteran, Carter said presidents feed the cycle, in part because "we make a hero" out of wartime commanders-in-chief.
The Carter Center, which has focused mainly on public health, election monitoring and conflict resolution, has "never voiced an opinion publicly" on individual wars, Carter noted.
"This is primarily my fault," the former president said, explaining that he wants the center to become a more forceful advocate on questions of war around the world, including "wars by the United States." He said the Carter Center could engage in "constructive criticism of the United States government ... without being partisan about it."
An outspoken Christian, Carter sometimes frames his views on war in terms of his faith, noting that Jesus is referred to in the Bible as the "prince of peace." But at the Carter Center in September and a day later in his town hall with Emory University freshmen, the former president emphasized economic consequences of war.
China, he noted, has "been at peace" since he normalized relations with Beijing in 1979. Since then, Carter said, the U.S. has spent trillions on military conflict, while China has invested similar amounts in high-speed rail, new college campuses and other infrastructure. He told Emory freshmen he's not "favorably" comparing China's human rights record, but rather emphasizing the costs of war.
Carter hasn't backed anyone in the Democratic presidential primaries, even as some candidates call on the former president . But he says re-electing President Donald Trump would be "a disaster."
He disclosed that he voted for Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, over the establishment favorite Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary. This time, Carter cautions Democrats not to go too far left, warning that an embrace of single-payer, government-run health insurance could cost the party votes among moderates and independents. That would seem to rule out Sanders and another progressive favorite, Elizabeth Warren.
But Carter said he would like to see a woman as president, and made a notable observation on age, saying he couldn't have managed "the duties I experienced when I was president" when he was 80 years old . That could be seen to nix not only Sanders, at 78, but the more moderate former Vice President Joe Biden, who is 76. Warren is 70.
Two longshot candidates who apparently fit Carter's stated priorities for the party are Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, a 37-year-old who was born after Carter's presidency ended, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a moderate who is close to Carter's vice president and fellow Minnesotan, Walter Mondale. Both have visited Carter since declaring their candidacies.
Carter has given no indication that he will endorse, making clear only that he'll be "voting Democratic" in the general election.
While he matter-of-factly declares his intentions to vote next fall, Carter also talks with the realism of a nonagenarian, born when the world population was quarter of what it is today and the life expectancy of American males was 58 years.
He noted he's often said he wanted to live long enough to announce the end of Guinea worm disease, a parasitic infection attributed to poor drinking water. There were 3.5 million cases in 21 countries in 1986, when the Carter Center began its eradication program. In 2018, there were 28 cases worldwide.
A year later, Carter expresses disappointment over an outbreak of the disease among dogs, with new human cases in Chad, Angola and Cameroon. Researchers from multiple universities, he said, are "trying to figure out what to do about it."
Meanwhile, the former president told a rapt Carter Center audience that they might have heard his final annual report, because he plans to start devoting more time to his family.
"This may be our last conversation with you," Carter said. "We may or may not have one next year."
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Nationwide protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy as it has shut down the internet and telephone networks.
Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has sent Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at over 1.4 million to $1.
Meanwhile, Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran — has been decimated since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.
A threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the U.S. “will come to their rescue," has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.
“We're watching it very closely,” Trump said Sunday. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the United States.”
Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's government.
More than 390 protests have taken place across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported Friday. The death toll had reached at least 42, it added, with more than 2,270 arrests. The group relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting and has been accurate in past unrest.
Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities. The internet shutdown has further complicated the situation.
But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”
The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.
In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world’s cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months. Meanwhile, food prizes are expected to spike after Iran’s Central Bank in recent days ended a preferential, subsidized dollar-rial exchange rate for all products except medicine and wheat.
The protests began in late December with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.
Iran's “Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.
Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.
China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.
Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.
Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no significant talks in the months since the June war.
Iran decades ago was one of the United States’ top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.
But in January 1979, the shah fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic government.
Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.
Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since. Relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
FILE -A student looks at Iran's domestically built centrifuges in an exhibition of the country's nuclear achievements, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - An Iranian security official in protective clothing walks through part of the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the Iranian city of Isfahan, on March 30, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - A customer shops at a supermarket at a shopping mall in northern Tehran, on Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Current and pre-revolution Iranian banknotes are displayed by a street money exchanger at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - People cross the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Protesters march on a bridge in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP, File)
People wave national flags during a ceremony commemorating the death anniversary of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
