Known as Persia until March 21, 1935, Iran is a nation of 68 million people (median age: 24 years) located in southwest Asia. It borders Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan to the north; Pakistan and Afghanistan to the east; and Turkey and Iraq to the west. The southern part of the country is bordered by the Persian Gulf, across which are located Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Iran covers an area of 1.648 million square miles, and its landscape features rugged mountain ranges that separate numerous basins and plateaus from one another.

Islam is Iran's official state religion. Ninety percent of Iranians belong to the Shi'a branch of Islam, and 9 percent to the Sunni branch. The rest are non-Muslim religious minorities, mainly Bahá'ís, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians.

Iran is OPEC's second largest oil producer (after Saudi Arabia) and holds 10 percent of the world's known oil reserves. Moreover, its natural gas reserves are second only to those of Russia. Iran's economy is a mixture of state ownership of large enterprises, village-based farming, low-tech private manufacturing, and small-scale private trading. Its chief commercial partners are France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea.

In 1979 Iran's ruling monarchy was overthrown, the Shah was forced into exile, and the nation became a theocratic Islamic republic led by the radical Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who took power in February. Khomeini appointed himself Supreme Ruler and presided over a "parliament" of clerics. On November 4 of that year, Muslim extremists seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 American hostages, whom they held in captivity until January 20, 1981, the day of Ronald Reagan's first inauguration as U.S. president. Relations between the U.S. and Iran deteriorated rapidly during that period, and Khomeini infamously proclaimed America "the Great Satan."

From 1980-1988, Iran fought a bloody, indecisive war with Iraq that resulted in more than a million casualties. The war began when Iraq invaded Iran on September 22, 1980 following a long history of border disputes.

Iran's government is composed of several interconnected ruling bodies. According to its Constitution, the Supreme Leader of Iran (also known as the Faqih) is the nation's chief political and religious authority, responsible for the delineation and supervision of "the general policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran." The Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts and serves for life. Since the revolution of 1979, Iran has had only two Supreme Leaders: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1979-1989) and Ayatollah Ali Khameini (1989-present).

Iran's government also has a president who is elected by universal suffrage to a 4-year term. He fulfills many of the traditional roles of a head of state and is responsible for implementing the Constitution. He appoints and supervises a 21-person cabinet known as the Council of Ministers, coordinates government decisions, and selects which government policies will be placed for consideration before the parliament. Eight vice presidents serve under the president. 

In 2005, the extremist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran. He quickly made headlines when he announced that Iran would move ahead with its nuclear program, and that Israel has no right to exist and should be destroyed.