Chapter 5 discribes how I hired smugglers from the Kirdish underground to get out of Iran and my experiences in a boarder city called Urumeh. Iran Flag The map shows Iran, an Islamic state between the Caspian Sea in the north and the Persian Gulf in the south. The country is officially named the Islamic Republic of Iran. Until the 1980s in the Western world, Persia was historically the common name for Iran. Persia was a monarchy until 1979 when the last Persian Shah Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in a popular uprising, headed by Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran borders Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan. It shares maritime borders with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. With an area of 1,648,195 km², Iran is almost three times the size of France or somewhat smaller than the US state of Alaska. Large parts of the country occupy the Iranian Plateau (or Persian Plateau, a geological formation in Western and Central Asia). A broad portion of Iran's coastal regions at the Persian Gulf is part of the Arabian plate. The highest mountain in Iran is Mount Damavand at 5,610 m (18,410 ft), a potentially active volcano in the Alborz mountain range south of the Caspian Sea, about 70 km northeast of Tehran. Most rivers in Iran are relatively short, shallow streams, the only navigable river is the Karun (Karoun) with a length of 725 km. The country has a population of 82 million people (est. 2019). The largest city and capital is Tehran. Other major cities are Mashhad, Isfahan, Karaj (a suburb of Tehran), Tabriz, Shiraz, Ahvaz, and Qom. Spoken language is Persian (Farsi, official). The official religion is Shia Islam. Regions of Iran Iran is divided into five regions with thirty-one provinces. The five administrative regions are Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, Kermanshah, and Mashhad.