Iran

Persia was the seat of the first true world empire, the Achaemenid, founded by Cyrus the Great around 550 BC and ruling from the Nile to the Indus, with a ceremonial capital at Persepolis. Alexander of Macedon destroyed it, but Persian imperial traditions revived under the Parthians and then the Sasanians, who ruled until the Arab-Muslim conquest of the seventh century.

Islam took hold, but — unlike much of the region — the Persian language and a distinct Iranian identity survived and shaped a golden age of science, poetry, and philosophy. Turkic and Mongol dynasties followed, and in the sixteenth century the Safavids made Twelver Shia Islam the state religion, which still sets Iran apart from its mostly Sunni neighbours and gave Isfahan its great square and mosques.

The Qajar dynasty presided over decline and foreign interference; the Pahlavi shahs (from 1925) modernised and Westernised under an autocracy propped up by Britain and the United States — including a 1953 coup that removed a prime minister who had nationalised the oil industry. In 1979 a mass revolution overthrew the Shah and established an Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini, defined since by clerical rule under a Supreme Leader, the long Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s, hostility with the United States and Israel, nuclear disputes and sanctions, and recurring waves of domestic protest.

That story has now turned into open war. Israeli strikes on Iran in June 2025 escalated into the Twelve-Day War, and from December 2025 mass demonstrations calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic spread across the country amid an economic crisis and a collapsing currency, met by the security forces with lethal force and internet blackouts. On 28 February 2026 the United States and Israel began coordinated strikes on Iran, killing several Iranian officials including the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei; on 8 March the Assembly of Experts named his son Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader. Washington justified the war as a response to the crackdown on the protests, as a way of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, as regime change and as a means of taking Iran's oil and gas; critics reject those justifications and call it a war of aggression in violation of international law. Iran replied with missile and drone attacks on Israel, on US bases and on Gulf states, several of which then struck Iran in turn, and blocked the Strait of Hormuz. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah resumed, Israel began occupying southern Lebanon in March, and an escalation by the Houthis in Yemen opened a crisis at the Bab al-Mandab strait in September. A ceasefire in April collapsed in July, and the war was still going on as this page was last checked.

Persian culture places poetry near its centre. Ferdowsi, Rumi, Hafez, Saadi, and Omar Khayyam are quoted in daily conversation, and many households keep a divan of Hafez for guidance. Carpet-weaving, miniature painting, calligraphy, and the formal Persian garden (a UNESCO listing) are the classic arts, and Iranian cinema has an international following.

Nowruz, the Persian new year at the spring equinox, has Zoroastrian roots and is the biggest celebration of the year, with the haft-sin table, house visits, and a two-week holiday. Taarof, an elaborate code of ritual politeness — offering, refusing, insisting — governs invitations, payments, and gifts and can baffle newcomers.

Hospitality to guests is intense and sincere; travellers are routinely invited home for tea and a meal. The tea house (chaikhaneh), the bazaar, and the family gathering are the settings of social life. Iranian society is also visibly divided between the norms of the state and a large, young, often Western-leaning population, a tension that surfaces in periodic protest movements.

Iran has more than 92 million people. Tehran, the capital, has around 9.4 million of them and sprawls up the Alborz foothills; Mashhad, Isfahan, Karaj, Shiraz, and Tabriz are the other large cities. The country is highly urban, with a young, well-educated population and high female university enrolment.

The economy is built on oil and gas, but years of sanctions, mismanagement, and isolation from the international financial system have produced high inflation, a collapsing currency, and a large "brain drain" of young professionals. Much business runs through informal networks and the bazaar, and state and Revolutionary Guard-linked entities control large parts of the economy.

Daily life is shaped by the compulsory dress code, the separation of the state's rules from private life behind closed doors, the price of everything rising, and the constant hospitality and social visiting that Iranians maintain regardless. Since February 2026 it has also been shaped by war: schools closed after the first strikes, the internet has been cut for long stretches, more than 100,000 civilian sites have been damaged, and large numbers of Afghan refugees have left the country.

Persian cuisine is fragrant rather than fiery, built on rice, herbs, dried fruit, nuts, and slow-cooked stews. Chelo kabab — saffron rice with grilled lamb or minced-meat kababs — is the everyday restaurant staple. The stews (khoresht) include ghormeh sabzi (herbs, kidney beans, and dried lime), fesenjan (chicken or duck in a walnut and pomegranate sauce), and gheimeh (split peas and tomato).

Tahdig, the prized crisp golden crust from the bottom of the rice pot, is fought over at the table. Ash (thick soups), kuku (herb frittatas), dolmeh (stuffed vine leaves), and abgoosht/dizi (a lamb and chickpea stew mashed at the table) round out the repertoire, with sabzi khordan — a plate of fresh herbs, radish, and feta — alongside almost everything.

Tea, served black in small glasses with sugar cubes held between the teeth, is constant. Alcohol is illegal; the drinks are doogh (a savoury yoghurt drink), sharbat, and fresh pomegranate and carrot juice. Iranian sweets — gaz nougat from Isfahan, saffron ice cream, baklava — and dates and pistachios are the gifts and the pleasures.

Isfahan is the showpiece: Naqsh-e Jahan Square, one of the largest in the world, framed by the Shah (Imam) Mosque, the exquisite Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, the Ali Qapu palace, and the covered bazaar, with historic bridges spanning the (often dry) river and an Armenian quarter across it. Shiraz, city of poets, has the tombs of Hafez and Saadi, the vivid stained glass of the Nasir al-Mulk "Pink Mosque," the Vakil bazaar, and the ruins of Persepolis and the royal Achaemenid tombs an hour away.

Yazd, a mud-brick desert city with a skyline of badgir windcatchers, keeps a living Zoroastrian community, a fire that has burned for centuries, and the hilltop Towers of Silence, and its historic city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Kashan has grand historic merchant houses and the classic Fin garden; Tehran has the crown jewels, the Golestan Palace, the Grand Bazaar, and the National Museum.

For landscape, the Alborz and Zagros mountains offer trekking and skiing, the Dasht-e Lut and Dasht-e Kavir deserts have some of the hottest recorded surface temperatures and dramatic yardang formations, the Caspian forests and rice terraces are lush and green, and the cliff-dwelling village of Kandovan, whose houses are cut into volcanic rock, and the steep hillside village of Masuleh are among the country's most striking settlements.

Many of these places have been damaged in the war. Strikes on Isfahan on 9 March 2026 damaged Naqsh-e Jahan Square, the Shah Mosque, Ali Qapu, the Jameh Mosque and the Chehel Sotoun palace; a strike a week earlier damaged the Golestan Palace in Tehran, and UNESCO has issued statements of concern and called for the protection of heritage sites in Iran and across the region.