Zahedan

Zahedan (Persian: زاهدان) is an Iranian city and the capital of the province of Sistan and Baluchistan. The city is located in southeastern Iran, east of the "Kavir-e Loot" desert, near the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, at altitude of 1,352 m from sea level and a distance of 1,605 km from Tehran.

The overwhelming majority of the city's inhabitants are ethnic Baluchi.
Today, Zahedan is the main economic center of the region and home to many small and medium scale industries. Its main products include cotton textiles, woven and hand-knotted rugs, ceramics, processed foods, livestock feed, processed hides, milled rice, bricks, and reed mats and baskets.

Although the surrounding area has some ancient sites, Zahedan has only developed in the 20th century. Before being chosen as the provincial administrative center in the 1930s, Zahedan was a small village. Its population reached 17,500 by 1956 and increased more than fivefold to 93,000 by 1976. After 1980 large numbers of refugees fleeing the invasion of Afghanistan by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) helped to triple the population of Zahedan to more than 281,000 by 1986, and now it has a population of 590,125 (2001 estimate).