Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (Persian: جمهوری اسلامی ایران, Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi-ye Irān), is a country inWestern Asia. The name "Iran", which in Persian means "Land of the Aryans", has been in native use since the Sassanian era. It came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, "Iran" is the name used officially in political contexts.
The 18th-largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), Iran has a population of around 75 million. It is a country of particular geopoliticalsignificance owing to its location in three spheres of Asia (West, Central, and South). Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoralstate of the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea, Kazakhstan and Russia are also Iran's direct neighbors to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country's largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation. Iran is a regional power, and holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Iran has the second largest provennatural gas reserves in the world and the fourth largest proven petroleum reserves.
