Iran in Magazines

For Iran's June 12 election, incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ran against three opponents. Iran's official news agency Islamic Republic News, reported that Ahmadinejad won the election with 63% of the vote, which prompted the European Union, the United Kingdom and several western countries to express concern over allegations of voting irregularities.

Following the election results Iranians protested in droves—Tehran and other cities saw the most street protestors and rioters since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Iranian security forces cracked down on the protestors with force and a crisis ensued. For more on the 1979 Iranian Revolution, read The Economist, Time magazine and Foreign Policy magazine.

U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders are hesitant to find a new policy for dealing with Iran but are under pressure to do so. The United States and the European Union want to encourage democratic change but will try to avoid doing anything that could be seen by Iranian leaders as interference, Time magazine reported. For more on U.S. foreign policy for Iran, read The Economist, Foreign Policy magazine and the Jerusalem Report.

Iran's elections and protests put Iran and its people front and center in the American media and to the American people. Most Americans recognize Iran as a regional power in the Middle East and holds an important position in international energy security and the world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas but may not know some basic facts about Iran.

The official name of Iran is the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was formerly known internationally as Persia until 1935. Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural context but Iran is the acceptable name for political references.

Iran is the 18th largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km². Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan and by the Persian Gulf on the south. To the west are Turkey and Iraq.

Tehran is the capital of Iran, the country's largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation. Iran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations, dating back to 7000 BC.

Iran has a population of more than seventy million people that consists of diverse groups of religious and ethnic backgrounds. The majority of the population speaks Persian, which is also the official language of the country; other Iranian languages and dialects are also spoken. Additionally, Arabic is spoken in the southwestern parts of the country.

The main ethnic groups of people in Iran are Persians, Azeris, Gilaki, Mazandarni, Kurds and Arabs. The official state religion is a branch of Islam known as the Twelver Shi'a branch; approximately 89% of Iranians belong to this religion. About 9% of Iranians belong to the Sunni branch of Islam, mainly Kurds and Iran's Balochi Sunni. The remaining 2% are non-Muslim religious minorities.

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Felicity Grant is a freelance writer in Atlanta.