- Iran is a culturally diverse society, and interethnic relations are generally amicable. Iranians are of mixed ancestry, and the country has important Turkic and Arab elements in addition to the Kurds, Baloch, Bakhtyari, Lurs, and other smaller minorities (Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, Brahuis, and others).
- The Persians, Kurds, and speakers of other Indo-European languages in Iran are descendants of the Aryan tribes that began migrating in the 2nd millennium BCE. From Central Asia into what is now Iran. The Kurds are concentrated in the western mountains of Iran.
- Those of Turkic ancestry are the progeny of tribes that appeared in the region—also from Central Asia—beginning in the 11th century CE.
- The largest Turkic group is the Azerbaijanians, a farming and herding people who inhabit the border provinces in the northwestern corner of Iran. Two other Turkic ethnic groups are the Qashqaii, in the Shiraz area to the north of the Persian Gulf, and the Turkmen, of Khorasan in the northeast
- Semites—Jews, Assyrians, and Arabs—constitute only a small percentage of the population. The Assyrians are concentrated in the northwest.
- The Armenians and Jews have retained their ethnic, linguistic, and religious identity and traditionally have clustered in the largest cities like Tehran & Eṣfahān (and some Armenians in the Azerbaijan region).
- Arab minority settled predominantly in the country’s southwest (in Khuzestan as well as in the Persian Gulf islands.
