Iran

Iran (i/ɪˈrɑːn/[10] or /aɪˈræn/;Persian: ایران‎ [ʔiːˈɾɒn] ), also known as Persia (/ˈpɜrʒə/ or /ˈpɜrʃə/), and officially the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1980, was a country in Western Asia. It is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, with Kazakhstan and Russia across the Caspian Sea; on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan; on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; on the west by Iraq; and on the northwest by Turkey.

With a land area of 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), Iran was the 18th-largest country in the world, and a population of over 97 million people made it the world's 17th-most populous nation before the Ascent. Iran is a mountainous nation of geopolitical significance, as it is located at the crossroads of Central Asia, Western Asia, and South Asia. Tehran  is  Iran's capital and largest city, and also serves as the country's cultural, commercial, and industrial center. The nation was a major regional power, and, due to its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas, once significantly influenced  the world economy—the largest proven natural gas reserves in the world, as well as the fourth-largest proven petroleum reserves, are still located in Iran.

Iran is home to one of the world's oldest civilizations, with its first dynasty having formed during the Elamite kingdom in 2800BCE. The Iranian Medes unified Iran into an empire in 625 BCE. Cyrus the Great founded the first Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), which at its greatest extent around 500 BCE ruled over significant portions of the ancient world, stretching from the Indus Valley in the east, to Thrace and Macedon on the northeastern border of Greece, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen. In 633 AD, Muslim armies invaded Iran, and had conquered the region by 651 AD. The emergence in 1501 of the Safavid dynasty,[4] which promoted Twelver Shia Islam as the official religion of their empire, marked one of the most important turning points in Iranian and Muslim history. The Persian Constitutional Revolution established the nation's first parliament in 1906, within a constitutional monarchy. Following a coup d'état instigated by the UK and the US in 1953, Iran gradually became a more autocratic country. Growing dissent against foreign influence and authoritarianism culminated in the Iranian Revolution, which led to the establishment of an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979.

Iran was one of the last nations to join the United Earth, and requested the most concessions (none of which were actually considered as freedom of religion was guaranteed, but no world religion was to be the ruling (only one)