Iran Map

Iran covers 1,648,195 square kilometers between the Caspian Sea to the north and the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman to the south, making it the second-largest country in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia. About 92 million people live here (UN World Population Prospects, 2025 estimate). Most of the country is a high plateau ringed by mountains, and the population is concentrated around its edges, in the north and west, where rain and snowmelt allow farming and cities. The capital, Tehran, sits at about 1,200 meters at the foot of the Alborz range. The country is divided into 31 provinces (ostan), and it shares land borders with seven countries, from Turkey and Iraq in the west to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east.

Mountains around a dry plateau

The Zagros Mountains run some 1,500 km from the Turkish and Iraqi borders down to the Strait of Hormuz, a belt of parallel ridges and valleys that has long been home to Kurdish, Lur and Bakhtiari communities. Iran's oilfields lie mostly at its southwestern foot, in Khuzestan, where the Karun, Iran's largest river, flows to the Shatt al-Arab. Along the Caspian shore, the Alborz rises steeply; its summit, Mount Damavand (5,610 m), is a dormant volcano, the highest peak in Iran and the highest volcano in Asia. Within this ring lie two great deserts: the salt flats of the Dasht-e Kavir and the Dasht-e Lut, where satellites have recorded some of the highest land-surface temperatures on Earth (more on both on the deserts of Asia page). In the northwest, Lake Urmia, once one of the largest salt lakes in the world, has shrunk dramatically since the 1990s because of dams, irrigation and drought, and water shortages are a pressing national issue.

Climate by region and when to visit

The Caspian provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran are green, humid and forested, with rice paddies and tea gardens, in sharp contrast to the arid interior. The plateau has hot, dry summers and cold winters; Tehran and Tabriz regularly see snow, and the Alborz has ski resorts close to the capital. The Gulf coast, around Bandar Abbas and Bushehr, is humid and very hot from May to September. For most travelers, spring (April-May) and autumn (October-November) are the best seasons for the classic route through Tehran, Kashan, Isfahan, Yazd and Shiraz. The two weeks of Nowruz, the Persian New Year at the March equinox, are a major holiday when domestic travel peaks. Iran keeps its own time zone, UTC+3:30, and stopped observing daylight saving time in 2022.

Major Cities

City-proper figures below are from Iran's 2016 census, the most recent full count.

• Tehran - About 8.7 million people, the capital since 1786 and the center of government, industry and finance; the Milad Tower and the Grand Bazaar are its landmarks
• Mashhad - About 3 million, in the northeast near Turkmenistan; the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia imam, draws millions of pilgrims each year
• Isfahan - About 2 million, the Safavid capital from 1598, built around Naqsh-e Jahan Square and the Zayandeh Rud river with its historic bridges
• Karaj - About 1.6 million, the industrial and commuter city just west of Tehran
• Shiraz - About 1.6 million, the city of the poets Hafez and Saadi and the base for visits to Persepolis and Pasargadae
• Tabriz - About 1.6 million, the main city of Iranian Azerbaijan, where Azerbaijani Turkic is widely spoken; its covered bazaar is a UNESCO site

Empires that drew the map

The Achaemenid Empire founded by Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BCE was the first of a series of Iranian empires; Persepolis, its ceremonial capital, was begun by Darius I around 518 BCE. After the Arab conquest in the 7th century, Persian survived as the main language and spread across Central and South Asia as a language of literature and administration. The Safavids (1501-1736) made Twelver Shia Islam the state religion, which is still the faith of most Iranians. In the 19th century the Qajar dynasty lost its Caucasus territories (today's Armenia and Azerbaijan, and part of Georgia) to Russia under the treaties of Gulistan (1813) and Turkmenchay (1828), and borders with Afghanistan and with British India (now Pakistan) were drawn in the decades that followed. The 1979 revolution ended the monarchy of the Pahlavi shahs and created the Islamic Republic, and the 1980-88 war with Iraq left the western border unchanged.

Persian (Farsi) is the official language, but Iran is ethnically mixed: Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Lurs, Arabs, Baluch and Turkmen live mainly in the border provinces (see the languages of Asia). Iran holds some of the world's largest proven oil and natural gas reserves, sharing the giant South Pars/North Dome gas field with Qatar, and it is the leading producer of saffron and a major producer of pistachios. Its more than two dozen UNESCO World Heritage sites range from Persepolis and the Persian gardens to the prehistoric caves of the Khorramabad Valley, inscribed in 2025.

Recent conflict

In June 2025, Israel and Iran fought a 12-day war in which Israel, and then the United States, struck Iranian nuclear and military sites and Iran fired missiles at Israel, ending in a ceasefire. A larger war began on 28 February 2026, when the US and Israel launched air strikes across Iran; Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day, and in March the Assembly of Experts chose his son Mojtaba Khamenei as successor. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was blocked and attacked during the fighting. A ceasefire agreed in April and a US-Iran memorandum signed in June broke down in July, and as of October 2026 there are indirect talks through mediators including Pakistan and Qatar, with no settlement.