From the perspective of land mass, Iran is a large country, measuring in at 1,648,000 square miles. It has a population of over 66 million, 98 percent of which is Muslim. Eighty-nine percent of its population is Shiite, while 9 percent is Sunni. Iran is also one of the youngest nations in the world; half of its population is under the age of 24.
Iran is quite rich in oil and natural gas. A full 80 percent of its exports comprise petroleum. Most experts say Iran will continue to produce petroleum for another 80 years and natural gas for another 200.
Iran is also a very mountainous country, with ranges and sparsely vegetated steppes dotting the geography. It also boasts a large semi-desert region in the south, where the mountains have very few trees and greenery. These “naked” mountains stretch far up into the sky, as far as the eye can see.
Images of Ayatollah Khomeini and the current Iranian leader, Ali Khamenei, decorate buildings here. Pictures of both of these men can be found in many government offices and bureaus, as well. Murals can be seen on the sides of apartment buildings, often depicting those who died during the Iran-Iraq War, an eight-year-long war that is still fresh in the minds of many Iranians. Images of the dead are in every city.
 [QUICK FACTS] Capital: Tehran Official language: Farsi Government: theocratic republic President: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Area: 1,648,195 square kilometers Population: 66,429,284* Gross domestic product (PPP): $841.7 billion** Main religions: Shiite Islam (89 percent), Sunni Islam (9 percent) *July 2009 estimate **2008 estimate |
Turkish and Iranian citizens can enter each others' countries without visas. There are an annual 1 million tourists who come to Turkey from Iran. On the other hand, the total number of tourists who visit Iran from around the world is only around 500,000. Turkish citizens can stay in Iran for up to three months without a visa, and the same is true for Iranian citizens visiting Turkey.
Iranians watch Turkish TV stations via satellite dishes, which, despite being technically forbidden in Iran, cover the roofs of most apartment buildings. Satellite dishes are often tilted so that apartment residents can watch both European and Turkish TV stations, and in fact, Turkish is known and spoken by many of the ethnic Azerbaijani citizens of Iran. There is a great deal of interest in and love for Turkey in general in Iran.
There are no American fast food chains present on Iranian soil. These chains, which these days are present in almost every country in the world, are nowhere to be seen in Iran. Another distinctive feature of Iranian culture is that you will very rarely see a man who wears a tie here, especially not in government offices. The weekend in Iran falls on Thursday and Friday.
The official language of Iran is Farsi, written with a modified Arabic alphabet. Aside from Iran, Farsi is also spoken in some places in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It is a language with its own literature, and in fact, Turkish has been deeply influenced by Farsi. There are around 10,000 shared words between Turkish and Farsi. In addition to Farsi, one will find Azeri, Turkmen Turkish, Kurdish, Balochi and Luri spoken in Iran.
The official currency in Iran is the rial, though most Iranians talk about the toman, which is a denomination equal to 10 rials. In other words, 1,000 rials are the same as 100 tomans. And $1 buys 935 tomans. For the amount of oil and natural gas wealth there is in Iran, the level of per capita income is actually quite low, around $12,800.
The sale and purchase of alcohol in Iran is forbidden, but those trying to obtain it here say it is not too difficult to do so.
The capital of Iran is Tehran, and though it used to be but a small village, Tehran now has a population of more than 15 million. Tehran has wide boulevards, but extremely chaotic daily traffic. The Alborz Mountains are right behind Tehran. The capital city is quite neatly laid out, and from the perspective of city planning, Tehran is in fact quite modern looking. The richer residents of Tehran tend to live in the northern parts of the city in luxurious dwellings. The air is cleaner there than in the southern reaches of Tehran, where the air is much more polluted.
Most families in Tehran have two children, with family and population planning strongly encouraged by the government. The country's population growth rate is currently around 1 percent.
Many Azeri Turks live in Tehran, so the likelihood of finding someone with whom you can converse in Turkish -- whether you are in an open market, a hotel or a restaurant -- is quite high.
Tehran's most famous boulevard is the Valiasr Street, which stretches 17 kilometers through the capital, and some say is one of the longest streets of its kind in the world. Trees line both sides of this street, with water running along its edges. This running water not only helps make the city more beautiful, it also provides the large trees with the water they need.
You won't notice as many mosques in Tehran as you initially do in Turkey. And the calls to prayer that ring out from the mosques here are much softer than in Turkey. They can really only be heard by the direct neighborhoods of those mosques. In addition, the calls to prayer are recited only three times a day here, as opposed to five times a day. Another mosque feature that may strike your eyes as different here is that the minarets are not as high. In Iran, minarets are usually only as high as the dome of the mosque, and sometimes the mosques have no minarets.
Tehran is full of giant construction projects. Apartments going up are marked, just as in Turkey, by the long steel skeletons that stretch up into the air in advance of the concrete to come. Almost every city in Iran has charity boxes, where people who want to help those needier than them can deposit money. In Tehran, you can find a “sadaqa” box nearly every 10 meters in the city. One of the reasons you will find these boxes is because begging is forbidden in Iran, and so instead, the money is collected in these sadaqa boxes, to be distributed to the needy.
Another interesting feature of Iranian streets is special green colored taxis. These taxis only pick up female customers and are driven by female drivers.
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