Iran is a country in southwestern Asia , located on the eastern side of the Persian Gulf . It lies at the easternmost edge of the geographic and cultural region known as the Middle East .

The neighbors of Iran are: Armenia and Azerbaijan on the northwest, Turkmenistan on the northeast, Iraq and Turkey on the west, Afghanistan and Pakistan on the east. 

Iran is the second largest country in the Middle East , after Saudi Arabia . It extends over a total area of 1,648,000 sq km. The country is almost triangle-shaped with its longest side extending from the border with Turkey in the northwest to the border with Pakistan in the southeast as long as 2,500 km. 

More than half of Iran 's international border of 4,430 km is coastline, including 740 km along the Caspian Sea in the north and 1,700 km along the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea in the south. Bandar-e-Abbas is the largest harbor in the south of Iran located on the Strait of Hormoz , the narrow passage separating the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea through which tens of oil tankers are heading for various destinations in different corners of the world everyday. 

One of the world's most mountainous countries, Iran contains two major ranges of mountains, the Alborz with the highest peak in Asia west of the Himalayas, Damavand (5671 m above sea level) and the Zagros that cuts across the country for more than 1,600 km extending from north west to the south east of the country. The peaks exceeding 2,300 m in these two ranges capture a considerable amount of moisture coming either from the Caspian Sea southward or the Mediterranean eastward.

There are also some other local ranges. Within these mountainous rims lies a series of basins known collectively as the central plateau. They include Dasht-e-Kavir , a huge salt-encrusted desert in north central Iran and Kavir-e-Lut, a sand-and-pebble desert in the southeast.