Iran 🇮🇷

Iran is a sovereign country in Southern Asia, in the wider region of Asia. Its full official name is Islamic Republic of Iran. Its seat of government is Tehran.

The population is about 91.6 million, placing it 17th of 249 by population — between Vietnam above it and Türkiye below. Among the 9 entries in Southern Asia it ranks 2nd by area and 4th by population.

The land area is 1,648,195 km², which ranks it 19th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Libya and just ahead of Mongolia. For scale, it is a little larger than Mongolia.

Spread across 1,648,195 km², that works out at about 56 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

Persian (Farsi) is the only official language. No other entry in this dataset lists Persian (Farsi), so on this list it stands alone.

The demonym is Iranian, so residents are Iranians.

Against Asia as a whole it is the 9th most populous of 50 entries, and it accounts for 4.4% of everyone living in Southern Asia.

Zoom in from the world to Southern Asia and Iran sits 4th of 9 by population and 2nd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Bangladesh just above and Afghanistan just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

India is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Southern Asia has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇧🇩 Bangladesh
• 🇦🇫 Afghanistan
• 🇮🇳 India

Plotted on a globe it falls at 32.0° north, 53.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 3,562 km from the equator, in what geographers would call subtropical latitudes.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Morocco, Tunisia and Bermuda — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

It borders 7 neighbours: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Türkiye and Turkmenistan. The largest of them by area is Pakistan, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 446.2 million people.

Unlike its landlocked neighbours it reaches the sea directly, while also sharing land frontiers.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Iran ranks 19th of 249 by area and 17th by population. That works out at 1.1% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 1.1% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Iran in the size ordering are Libya at 1,759,540 km² and Mongolia at 1,564,110 km², against Iran's 1,648,195 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Iran averages 56 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it middling in density — 160th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

The Iranian rial (IRR) is used only in Iran among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Persian (Farsi) is listed for Iran and for no other entry on this site. A language confined to one country is unusual, and it is normally a sign of long isolation or of deliberate revival.

It uses the Iranian rial (﷼, IRR). It is issued for Iran alone.

Tehran is the city to remember for this country.

The top-level domain is .ir. Calls from overseas start with +98. In ISO terms it is ir in two letters and IRN in three.

Iran is one of the 192 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.