(Note: GeoCurrents has been on an extended hiatus due to personal issues and teaching obligations. I now hope to resume regular posting. My initial focus will be on Iran, for obvious reasons).
Iran is usually regarded as a middle-income country. According to the International Monetary Fund, its per capita GDP (in purchasing power parity) at the beginning of 2026 was 21,882 current international dollars. This figure places it in the 91st position out of 190 counties listed, between Ukraine and Kosovo. In nominal terms, however, Iran’s per capita GDP was only US$ 4,250 (IMF) in early 2026, putting it in the 129th position. Considering Iran’s high levels of education and massive natural resource endowment – with the third highest proven oil reserves and the second highest proven natural gas reserves – these are low figures. As the maps posted below show, nearby countries with similar advantages have far more productive economies. It would seem that the Iranian regime’s repressive nature and focus on military expenditure have undermined its economic development.
As might be expected of a large (ranking in 17th position) and populous (also 17th) country, Iran exhibits substantial internal variation in economic productivity. Finding reasonably accurate information on Iran’s per capita GDP by province, however, is difficult. Wikipedia features such a map (below), but the data is from 2012. For the most part, however, the patterns seen on this map still seem to hold. Economic productivity is highest in the north-central and south-coastal parts of the country, and lowest in the far southeast and northwest.
In trying to find recent province-level economic data for Iran, I turned to Artificial Intelligence – and was soon disappointed. ChatGPT told me that such information is not available from authoritative sources, but it did provide a list of five tiers of provinces by per capita GDP. Google AI (Gemini) provided a more limited set of three tiers, which included only “key economic” provinces. Grok gave actual per capita GDP figures, but only for 20 provinces.
I have mapped all these AI-derived lists (above). As can be seen, there are some profound differences among them. Grok claims that the most economically productive region of is the small and mountainous province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad (its nominal per capita GDP is listed at US$ 21,124, whereas second-place Tehran is placed at only US$ 14,544). In contrast, ChatGPT puts Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad in the bottom tier of provinces, as does the 2012 Wikipedia map. ChatGPT ranks the large, centrally located province of Yazd in the second-highest tier of provinces, whereas Grok puts it in a much lower position. All three chatbots, however, agree that the coastal, oil-oriented provinces of Khuzestan and Bushehr are among Iran’s most economically productive regions. Tehran and some of the provinces near it rank high in all three assessments. Google, Grok, and ChatGPT also agree that Sistan and Baluchestan in the southeast falls at or near the bottom of the chart.
Although recent information from the Iranian government is evidently not available, IranOpenData does list per capita GDP by province from 2020, which I have also mapped (below). This dataset shows a gap of almost an order of magnitude between the most productive province (Bushehr) and the least productive (Sistan and Baluchestan). More surprising is the assertion that the per capita GDP of Bushehr is more than twice that of second-place Yazd, (1,072,595 thousand rials vs 400,518). The information found in IranOpenData fits relatively well with the Iranian economic patterns depicted on a MapPorn map of per capita GDP by province for all the countries of southwestern Asia. A YouTube map comparing Iran and Turkey (Türkiye) on this issue is also similar, although it ranks Yazd in a much lower position. Both comparative maps place Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad in a relatively high position, with the YouTube map matching Grok’s first-place assessment.
Despite numerous contradictions among the sources consulted, there are some clear patterns in the geography of economic productivity in Iran. The possible reasons underlying these patterns will be explored in the next GeoCurrentspost.