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You can easily connect to an open network though

iwconfig wlan0 essid "THE NETWORK NAME"

Closed networks work with wpa_supplicant. You normally send a configuration file with that but you can simulate the file with a named pipe:

wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -c <(echo -e 'network={\n ssid="THE NETWORK NAME" \n psk="THE PASSWORD" \n}') -B

wlan0 is your network interface name. -B means go into the background. The \ns in the configuration file is needed sadly and so we pass -e to echo to interpret them.

iwconfig should show your new connection but perhaps only after a second.

After this dhclient wlan0 will get you a dhcp address and you'll be ready to go. You may want to kill any prior instances of dhclient.