The Cambridge History of Iran
W.B. Fisher
Cambridge University Press
The present Iranian state covers an area of some 628,000 square miles (1,648,000 sq. km) and extends between latitude 250 and 400 N., and longitude 440 and 63 ° E. More than six times the size of Great Britain and approximately three times the size of France, which is the largest country in Western Europe, Iran has a frontier that has been estimated at 2,750 miles in total length, of which over half is sea coast, with 400 miles lying along the southern Caspian shore, and the remainder (1,100 miles) comprising the northern parts of the Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf. From the extreme north-west to south-east—at approximately the frontier with Turkey and the U.S.S.R., close to Mt Ararat, as far as the Baluchistan border just east of Chahbahar1—is a total distance of 1,450 miles; whilst an opposite diagonal, so to speak, from Bushire (Bushahr) to the Soviet frontier north-east of Mashhad, would measure 830 miles.
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