15 facts, you don't know about Iran:
1. Iran spans 630,000 square miles, roughly comparable to Alaska’s 660,000 sq. mi. (1.7 million sq. km)
2. About 69 million people call Iran home- twice the population of California or Poland- with a median age of 25 and a life expectancy of 70 years; about 60 percent are Persians, with Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs and others making up the rest.
3. Iran is 99 percent Muslim, consisting of 95 percent Shiites and about 4 percent Sunnis; in the Middle East, Iran’s population of 25,000 Jews is second only to Israel.
4. Iran, which lies along a key drug smuggling route, has one of the highest opiate addiction rates in the world; health experts say from 2 million to 4 million Iranians are addicted to narcotics.
5. Iran’s basic unit of currency is the rial; about 9,326 rials equals to one US dollar; bills in denominations of 1,000 rials and up display a portrait of Ayatollh Ruhollah Khomeini.
6. An Ayatollah is a Shiite religious leaser; both of Iran’s post-revolution supreme leaders. Ruhollah Khomeini and now Ali Khamenei, have been grand ayatollahs; the supreme leader is the highest-ranking political and religious figure in Iran; an elected president oversees the executive branch of government.
7. Iranian oilfields produce about 4 million barrels a day, about 5 percent of the world total; Iran ranks second to Saudi Arabia worldwide in crude oil reserves.
8.Dating back 2,500 years. Persian rugs are crafted from wool, cotton or silk in 1999, a classical Persian carpet sold at auction for $2.4 million.
9. Iran is one of the world’s top producers of luxury foods, such as caviar and pistachios; it’s also a top source of saffron.
10. One of the only condom factories in the Middle East is in Iran, which actively promotes contraception for family planning.
11. Skiing is a popular pastime in mountainous Iran. Which boasts numerous ski resorts; the Dizin resort, about a two-hour drive from Tehran, is one of the world’s highest, cricket, baseball, women’s rugby and soccer also are popular.
12. Iran has thriving film industry, producing hundreds of popular and art-house films each year; one of the top-grossing films of 2006, “Iron Island” tells the story of a fictional society of squatters aboard a huge, abandoned oil tanker.
13. Modern Iran has its roots in the Persian Empire, founded in 550 B.C.; the Persians were pioneers in mathematics and architecture- they built the first windmills; Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions, began in Persia.
14. U.S Census Bureau estimated in 2005 that 378,000 Iranians Americans live in the United States, most having fled the 1979 Islamic revolution; they include actress Shohreh Aghdashioo, the first Iranian to be nominated for an Academy Award, for “House of Sand and Fog” in 2003.
15. Elected president of Iran in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 51, is a civil engineer who was a student leader in the 1979 revolution; he was a paramilitary engineer during the war with Iraq, then mayor of Tehran; he is married with two sons and a daughter.
(Copyright acknowledged for the original publishers)
(Source: Times Global, Delhi edition on Wednesday 21st Nov. 2007)
