Iran is a Muslim country and is situated in the Middle East. Its area is second in size only to Saudi Arabia among the Persian Gulf states. Its population is the largest of that group, three times as large as Iraq's and five times as large as Saudi Arabia's. The languages spoken by most Iranians are Indo-European. The Ural-Altaic family of languages is represented by Turkic-speaking Iranians, and the Semitic linguistic family by the relatively small number of Arab Iranians.

Iran is the most populous and the second-largest country (after Saudi Arabia) in the Middle East and a major exporter of oil. Its name means "Land of the Aryans." Iran was the center of a great empire of the ancient world. It remained a monarchy until the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran became Muslim after the Arab conquest in the 7th century; Shiite Islam became its official religion in the 16th century.