Iran

Core values & worldview

If you want to understand an Iranian, start with the sense of a very long story. Iranians date their civilisation back two and a half thousand years, to Cyrus the Great, and through the Sasanians, the Arab conquest, the Mongols, the Safavids and two revolutions it has survived by absorbing its conquerors rather than being absorbed. Iranians will often tell you that the Arabs, Turks and Mongols conquered Iran, and Iran conquered them in turn, with its language, its court culture and its poetry.^•

It is a source of pride, and also of an ache: why does a country with such a past live through such a present?

Poetry as a way of thinking. Persian poetry is not a museum piece. Ordinary people quote Hafez, Saadi, Rumi, Khayyam and Ferdowsi in arguments, love letters and text messages. Hafez’s tomb in Shiraz is busy at all hours, and many families consult his Divan for an omen.^•

The poetry’s double meanings, where wine may be divine love and the beloved may be God, have taught Iranians to read between the lines, a useful skill under censorship.

Justice and martyrdom. Shia Islam, Iran’s faith since the Safavids imposed it in 1501, is built around the memory of Imam Hussein, the Prophet’s grandson, killed at Karbala in 680 for refusing to submit to an unjust ruler. That story, retold every Muharram, gave Iranians a powerful vocabulary of grief, sacrifice and resistance, one that both the 1979 revolutionaries and the regime’s opponents have used.^•

Family, courtesy and the private sphere. Family is the core of life, and hospitality is a point of pride: guests are fed lavishly and urged to eat more. Politeness is governed by taarof, an elaborate etiquette of modesty and deference in which offers are refused before they are accepted and compliments are batted back.^•

Many Iranians have long lived two lives: a public one shaped by the state, and a private one at home among family and friends, where they speak, dress and sometimes drink as they please.^•

Independence, and suspicion. Generations of foreign meddling, from Russia’s annexation of the Caucasus to the 1953 coup against Mosaddegh, left a deep conviction, shared across political lines, that great powers will always try to control Iran. It produces both fierce national pride and a reflex to look for a foreign hand behind every event.^•

Daily life & customs

The Iranian year begins with Nowruz at the spring equinox, around 20–21 March, the biggest holiday of the year and older than Islam. Families spring-clean, lay a haft-sin table of seven items beginning with the letter “s” (sprouts, apples, garlic, vinegar and more), wear new clothes and spend two weeks visiting relatives, starting with the elders. On the thirteenth day, Sizdah Bedar, everyone picnics outdoors to cast out bad luck.^•

Before it comes Chaharshanbe Suri, when people jump over bonfires on the last Tuesday night of the year; at the winter solstice comes Shab-e Yalda, the longest night, with pomegranates, watermelon and readings of Hafez.^• The religious calendar adds the fasting month of Ramadan and the mourning of Muharram, when processions, passion plays and free food mark Ashura.^•

Iran uses its own solar calendar, the Solar Hijri, with Persian month names; the year 1405 began in March 2026. The weekend falls on Friday.

Food is a central pleasure: rice cooked so that it forms a golden crust, tahdig; slow stews (khoresh) such as ghormeh sabzi and the sweet-sour pomegranate-and-walnut fesenjan; kebabs; and endless glasses of tea, often drunk through a sugar cube held between the teeth. Meals are shared, and a guest who leaves hungry is a host’s failure.

Education is highly valued. Since the 2000s women have made up around half or more of university students, a striking fact for a country where the law still discriminates against them.^•

Iranians are also passionate about football: the national team, Team Melli, and the Tehran rivalry between Persepolis and Esteghlal can stop a city.

Under the surface of official rules, ordinary life goes on in ways outsiders rarely see: mountain hikes in the Alborz on Friday mornings, family picnics in parks late into the night, satellite dishes and VPNs, underground concerts and parties.

Wounds & sensitivities

1953. The CIA- and MI6-backed coup that overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh is, for many Iranians, the original sin of Western policy towards their country, and a reason they distrust Western talk of democracy.^•

The war with Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s invasion in 1980 began eight years of war that killed several hundred thousand people. Iraq used chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers and civilians while most of the world looked away, and veterans still suffer from them.^•

Repression by their own state. The executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, the killings of protesters in 2009, 2019 and 2022, and the January 2026 massacre, in which the government admitted 3,117 deaths and rights groups verified far more, are open wounds. Many families have lost someone to prison, execution or exile.^•

War again. The US–Israeli strikes of February 2026 that killed Ali Khamenei plunged Iran into a new war, a generation after the war with Iraq. Iranians abroad watch news of bombed cities with fear for their relatives, whatever they think of the regime.^•

Being equated with the regime. Iranians abroad are tired of being treated as representatives of a government many of them fled, of sanctions that hurt ordinary people far more than rulers, and of travel bans that separate families.^•

Being called Arab. Iranians are not Arabs, Persian is not Arabic, and the body of water to the south is the Persian Gulf. Calling it the “Arabian Gulf” is guaranteed to cause offence.^•

Modern attitudes

Turning from religion, or reshaping it. Iran is officially an Islamic republic, and many Iranians remain devout. But a large anonymous online survey by GAMAAN in 2020, of around 50,000 people, found only about a third identifying as Shia Muslims, and almost half saying they had lost their religion; online surveys may over-represent the urban and connected, but the trend is widely noticed inside Iran.^•

Many people separate private faith from the state’s version of it.

The hijab. Compulsory veiling, in force since the early 1980s, became the central symbol of the 2022 protests. Since then many women, especially in big cities, go out without a headscarf despite the law and the risk.^•

Disillusion with reform. After the reform era of the late 1990s and the crushed Green Movement of 2009, many Iranians stopped believing the Islamic Republic could change from within, and election turnout fell sharply. Protest slogans moved from “Where is my vote?” to rejecting the whole system.^•

Patriotism without the state. Many Iranians who oppose the government are fiercely patriotic. Pride in pre-Islamic heritage, the national football team and figures like Cyrus has become a way to express an Iranian identity separate from the Islamic Republic. There is also nostalgia for the Pahlavi era among some, though others remember its repression.^•

The outside world. Despite decades of “Death to America” at official rallies, many Iranians are curious about and warm towards Americans and Westerners as people, while remaining wary of Western governments.^•

Not all Iranians are the same

Peoples and languages. Persian (Farsi) is the national language and the mother tongue of perhaps half the population. Azerbaijani Turks, concentrated in the north-west and in Tehran, are the largest minority and are woven deeply into Iranian life; Ali Khamenei himself had Azeri roots. Kurds live in the west, Lurs and Bakhtiaris in the Zagros, Arabs in Khuzestan, Baloch in the south-east, Turkmen in the north-east, and Gilakis and Mazandaranis by the Caspian. Iran does not publish ethnic statistics, so all figures are estimates.^•

Kurds, Baloch and Arabs in particular complain of discrimination, poverty and harsh security policies, and their regions often suffer the worst repression.^•

Religions. Around nine in ten Iranians are counted as Shia. Sunni Muslims, many of them Kurds, Baloch and Turkmen, are a sizeable minority. Christians (mainly Armenians and Assyrians), Jews and Zoroastrians are recognised minorities with reserved seats in parliament; Iran’s Jewish community, though much smaller than before 1979, is one of the largest in the Middle East outside Israel. The Baha’is, the largest non-Muslim minority, are not recognised and have been persecuted since the revolution.^•

Politics. Some Iranians genuinely support the Islamic Republic, often more religious, rural or connected to the state; others are reformists who wanted to change it from within; many now reject it entirely. The opposition is itself divided, between monarchists, republicans, leftists, ethnic parties and the widely disliked Mojahedin-e Khalq.^•

Generations. Grandparents may remember the Shah’s Iran; parents the revolution and the war; those under 40, the majority, have known only the Islamic Republic, grew up online and are often the most defiant.^•

Inside and outside. Millions of Iranians live abroad, from Los Angeles to Toronto, London, Germany, Sweden and Dubai. Diaspora Iranians are often more outspoken than people inside, who risk arrest, and the two sometimes disagree about sanctions, war and how change should come.^•

Meeting someone

Conversation starters

• Food. Ask about their favourite dish or whose family makes the best tahdig, and expect an invitation.
• Poetry and culture. Ask who their favourite poet is, or about Hafez, Rumi or Forough Farrokhzad; mention Farhadi’s or Kiarostami’s films.^•
  • Hafez — Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Nowruz. Wishing someone “Nowruz mobarak” in March is always welcome.^•
  • Nowruz, Novruz, Nooruz, Navruz, Nauroz, Nevruz — UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (2016)
• Their city. Iranians love to talk about where they’re from, and about Isfahan, Shiraz, the Caspian or the mountains.
• Taarof. If someone refuses your offer, ask again; if they insist you go first through a door, a little back-and-forth is part of the dance.

Topics to approach carefully

• Politics and the regime. Don’t assume an Iranian supports or opposes the government; let them raise it. People inside Iran, or with family there, may worry about being overheard or posted online.^•
  • Report of the independent international fact-finding mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (A/HRC/55/67) — UN Human Rights Council (2024)
• The war. Feelings about the 2025–26 strikes and Khamenei’s death are mixed and raw. Many people feel relief, grief, anger and fear at the same time. Don’t cheer bombs falling on someone’s home town.^•
  • Mojtaba Khamenei, son of ayatollah killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes, named Iran's new supreme leader — NBC News (2026)
• Religion. Someone may be devout, quietly spiritual or firmly secular. Don’t assume.^•
  • Iranians' Attitudes Toward Religion: A 2020 Survey Report — Ammar Maleki and Pooyan Tamimi Arab, GAMAAN (2020)
• Family left behind. Separation, visa bans and the dangers of travelling home are painful subjects.
• “Persia” or “Iran”? Both are fine; some diaspora Iranians prefer “Persian” to separate themselves from the regime, but remember that not every Iranian is Persian.^•
  • Minorities in Iran: Nationalism and Ethnicity after Khomeini — Rasmus Christian Elling, Palgrave Macmillan (2013)

Common misconceptions

• “Iranians are Arabs.” They are not. Persian is an Indo-European language, related to English more than to Arabic.^•
  • A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind — Michael Axworthy, Basic Books (2008)
• “Iranians are all religious hardliners.” Many Iranians are devout, but many others are secular-minded or quietly spiritual, and plenty resent religion being imposed by the state.^•
  • Iranians' Attitudes Toward Religion: A 2020 Survey Report — Ammar Maleki and Pooyan Tamimi Arab, GAMAAN (2020)
• “Iranian women can’t study or work.” Women face legal discrimination, but they make up around half of university students and work as doctors, engineers, artists and MPs.^•
  • Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution — Nikki R. Keddie, Yale University Press (2006)
  • Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic — Michael Axworthy, Oxford University Press (2013)
• “Death to America means Iranians hate Americans.” It is an official slogan; many Iranians are warm towards Americans and the West as people.^•
  • Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic — Michael Axworthy, Oxford University Press (2013)
• “Iran is all desert.” It has snowy mountains with ski resorts, Caspian rainforests, and four seasons.^•
  • Iran — Encyclopaedia Britannica