Zahedan, city in southeastern Iran, located near the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, the capital of Sistan va Balochestan province. Lying east of the Dasht-e Lut desert, 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. Highways link Zahedan to Tehran and Mashhad (Meshed) in the north, the port of Bandar Beheshti on the Gulf of Oman in the south, and the Pakistani city of Quetta in the east. A rail line also runs from Zahedan to Quetta, and a long-planned rail line from Zahedan to Kerman in central Iran was being constructed in the mid-1990s. Zahedan is also served by an airport. Like most Iranian cities, Zahedan has a Friday mosque, where many members of the community gather to worship on Friday. It also has a Sunni Mosque, a Sikh temple, and ruins of an old fortress. A colorful bazaar patronized by the local Baluchi tribes can also be found in the city. About 100 km (60 mi) south of Zahedan is an intermittently active volcano, Taftan, which rises abruptly 4,042 m (13,261 ft) from the surrounding plain.
Although the surrounding area has some ancient sites, Zahedan has developed only 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. Population (1996) 419,518.
