Iran, long known to the outside world as Persia, lies on a high plateau between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, ringed by the Zagros and Alborz mountains and crossed by deserts and oases linked by caravan roads and qanats. Here people were herding goats and growing cereals in the villages of the Zagros some ten thousand years ago, Elam built Susa and invented the Proto-Elamite script, and the Medes and Persians, Iranian-speaking peoples who settled the plateau, went on to found the Achaemenid Empire of Cyrus and Darius, the first world empire, governed from Pasargadae, Susa and Persepolis.

After Alexander the Great, the Seleucids and the Parthian Arsacids ruled the plateau for six centuries, and the Sasanians, who fought Rome and Byzantium for four hundred years, revived Persian kingship until the Arab conquest of the seventh century. Under the caliphate Iranians shaped the language, learning and administration of the Islamic world, and from the ninth century New Persian poetry and science flourished under Samanids, Buyids, Seljuks and Ilkhans, even as Mongol invasions devastated Khorasan. In 1501 Ismail I founded the Safavid state and made Twelver Shi'ism its religion, and Shah Abbas made Isfahan one of the great cities of the world.

Nader Shah, the Zands and the Qajars followed, and under the Qajars Iran lost the Caucasus to Russia, granted foreign concessions and, in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1911, gained the first parliament in the Middle East. The Pahlavi shahs built a centralised state on oil revenue until the revolution of 1979 created the Islamic Republic, which fought the eight-year war with Iraq and has since lived under sanctions, protest and, in 2025–2026, war with Israel and the United States.

Explore the ten ages below through selected events from the timeline.