- Capital City: Tehran
- Area: 1,648,000 sq. km
- Population: 92.4 million
- Official Language: Farsi (aka Persian)
- GDP per capita: $4,400
- Life Expectancy: 73.8 men and 78.4 women
Iran is the second largest country in southwest Asia, after Saudi Arabia. Positioned between Central and South Asia and the Middle East, Iran also spans the length of the Persian Gulf to the south and the Caspian Sea to the north. This important geopolitical position has made Iran a historic and cultural bridge between continents. As a result, Iran is home to a diversity of religions, cultures, and languages.
Iran, as a cohesive collection of cultures, has existed for centuries and is historically called Persia. The 7th-century Arab Conquest saw Islam replace Zoroastrianism as the dominant religion, with Shi’a Islam becoming the state religion in 1501. Though the majority of Iranians are Shi’a, Iran continues to be home to a relevant population of Sunnis, as well as Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. Further religious minorities – such as Baha’i – report government human rights abuses. Iran also has many ethnic minorities, such as Kurds, Azerbaijani, and Armenians.
In the late 20th century, Iran saw a quick succession of conflicts stoked by foreign political involvement. The nationalization of Iran’s oil production in 1951 led directly to the US and UK-backed coup to reinstall a ruler sympathetic to the West. Popular discontent eventually led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the 444-day-long Iran Hostage Crisis, and the establishment of the current Islamic Republic. Iran also fought a bloody 8-year-long war with Iraq in the 1980s and has been the target of extensive international economic sanctions from the US, EU and the United Nations intended to stop the country’s nuclear enrichment program.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is governed by religious clerics who oversee elected officials, including the president. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the head of the government. Since its inception in 1979, this government has been characterized by extensive surveillance and control of the country’s media, school curriculum, and telecommunications. The government has imposed dress codes for men and women, enforced by wide-ranging morality police.
Women are required to wear a hijab (head covering or head scarf) in public. In 2022, young woman Mahsa Amini was arrested by the morality police for non-compliance with the hijab law. She died in custody not long after being detained, with official reports claiming she died of a heart attack and witnesses claiming she was beaten. Her death sparked mass protests across Iran and the Iranian diaspora, and inspired an out-pouring of international support united under the slogan “Women. Life. Freedom”. The Iranian government responded with a brutal crackdown on protests, increased surveillance, and a notable increase in prisoner executions.
In 2025, Israel and Iran were locked in a 12-day war, which also involved the US bombing some of Iran’s nuclear sites. Human Rights Watch notes that in the aftermath of the war, the Iranian government has increased its brutal control of civilians, including mass arrests and further repression of ethnic and religious minorities. Many ethnic minorities live in Iran’s northern- and western-most provinces, such as Kurdistan, Western and Eastern Azerbaijan, and northern Iran along the Turkmenistan border.
Due to the Iranian government’s crackdown on protests following the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022, Canada extended “special measures” to temporary Iranian residents to extend their stay in the country. These special measures were in place until February 28, 2025.
As of June 2025, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada reported 9,794 pending Iranian applications for asylum, with 1,558 accepted between January and June 2025.
The CBC reports that Iranian asylum applications have the highest rate of acceptance in Canada. Furthermore, the highest percentage of asylum seekers from Iran claim religious persecution because they had “renounced Islam”. The same CBC report found the second largest group seeking protection were Christians. “For people from countries like Iran, where the government is the source of persecution, it’s a given that the person cannot be safe anywhere” in their home country; in theory, this makes their asylum case more straightforward to prove.