Iran

Iran is a country in western Asia, in the region often called the Middle East. It shares borders with Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. To the north lies the Caspian Sea. To the south lie the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Iran is about 636,000 square miles in size, which makes it a little bigger than the state of Alaska. More than 88 million people live there, and the capital city is Tehran.

Most of Iran is a high, dry plateau. Tall mountains run along the north and west. Two huge deserts cover much of the center. One of them, the Dasht-e Lut, once reached a surface temperature of 159 degrees Fahrenheit. That is one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded anywhere on Earth. Snow falls in the mountains in winter, and people ski near Tehran. So the country is hot, cold, wet, and dry, all at once, depending on where you stand.

Iran used to be called Persia. The Persian Empire, which began around 550 BCE, was once the largest empire the world had ever seen. It stretched from Egypt to India. The country officially changed its name from Persia to Iran in 1935, but the language is still called Persian, or Farsi. Persian uses an alphabet that looks like Arabic but sounds very different.

Iran has one of the oldest living cultures on Earth. Persian poets like Rumi and Hafez have been read for more than 700 years. The city of Isfahan holds one of the biggest public squares in the world, ringed by tiled mosques and palaces from the 1600s. Persian carpets, woven by hand, can take years to finish. Iranians also gave the world the game of backgammon and the idea of the qanat, an underground tunnel that carries water across the desert.

The country sits above huge pools of oil and natural gas. It holds some of the largest reserves in the world, and selling oil is a big part of its economy.

Most Iranians are Muslim, and most follow the Shia branch of Islam. In 1979, a revolution replaced Iran's king, called the Shah, with a religious government led by clerics. That government still rules today. Iran often disagrees sharply with the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and news about Iran often focuses on these conflicts. But inside the country, daily life goes on. Families gather for Nowruz, the Persian New Year, every spring when the mountain snow begins to melt.