What Time Is It in Iran Right Now?

Three and a half, held flat. Iran keeps UTC+3:30 in every month as Iran Standard Time (IRST), and since the reversal of 2022 the clock has not moved for the seasons. Local time is UTC plus three and a half hours. From your own clock, take three and a half and remove your offset, adding it where the offset is negative: UTC+2 lands an hour and a half behind, UTC-5 eight and a half.

• Time zone: UTC+3:30 (IRST)

• Daylight saving: Discontinued in 2022, none since

• IANA identifier: Asia/Tehran

• Zones nationwide: One

• Land neighbours: Seven countries

Iran Standard Time (IRST) and the Half-Hour UTC Offset

A meridian of its own. The offset was fixed in 1935 on a reference line at fifty-two and a half degrees east, midway between the whole-hour lines that bracket it. Rounding either way would have left the clock a full half hour out of step with local noon, so the fraction was taken and kept.

Its own occupant. No other country settled on the same figure, so an offset list showing three and a half hours is showing Iran alone. That uniqueness is exactly why an abbreviation is risky and the plain number or the identifier is safer.

Daylight Saving Time on a Calendar That Moved the Dates

Three runs, three endings. Summer time here was tried and dropped rather than settled. A first spell ended in 1980, a second and longer one ran through the nineties and beyond, and a third began in 2008 after parliament restored the practice against the government of the day. The final reversal came in September 2022.

Dates that drifted. What made this awkward abroad was not the switching but the dating. Transitions were pegged to the Iranian solar calendar, falling on the first day of Farvardin and the last of Shahrivar, so their Gregorian dates moved from year to year and schedulers abroad had to track a clock that changed on a shifting target.

Border Time Differences on Every Side

No neighbour matches. Seven countries touch Iran and none shares its offset, so every land crossing moves the clock. Iraq and Türkiye read thirty minutes earlier; Armenia and Azerbaijan thirty minutes later; Afghanistan an hour later; Turkmenistan and Pakistan an hour and a half later.

Fixed in both directions now. None of the seven adjusts for the seasons either, and that symmetry is recent. While Iran still switched, each frontier behaved differently across the year: the gaps to Iraq and Türkiye widened, those to Armenia and Azerbaijan reversed direction, and the Afghan border vanished for half of every year, because Iranian summer time matched the offset Kabul keeps permanently.

Set it against Tehran noon. Tehran reaches midday at 08:30 UTC. Nine in the morning in London is half past twelve here, half past eleven once Britain is on summer time; nine in New York is half past five in the Iranian evening.

The week starts on Saturday. Offices open the week on Saturday and Friday is the weekly holiday, leaving four days shared with a Monday-to-Friday counterpart. Thursday sits in between, worked in some sectors and not others.

Mornings run early. Public offices tend to open soon after seven and close in mid-afternoon, so a call placed at the start of the European day can arrive as the Iranian one is ending. The useful overlap with western Europe is their morning.

Which other countries use UTC+3:30?
None. Iran is the sole occupant of this figure, so no other national clock reads the same.

What year does the Iranian calendar show?
A solar year counted from a different era, beginning at the spring equinox. Its leap years are set by astronomical observation rather than a repeating rule, making it unusually accurate against the seasons.

At what point does Iran move to the next calendar day?
At 20:30 UTC, so a late European evening is already tomorrow in Tehran.

How much daylight does Tehran get between winter and summer?
About fourteen and a half hours at the June solstice and under ten at the December one.

Which day is the weekly holiday?
Friday. Saturday is a normal working day, which catches out visitors expecting a Western weekend.

Why do older records show Iran at UTC+4:30 in summer?
That was the summer offset while daylight saving was in force. Timestamps from before the final reversal need the identifier rather than a fixed number to resolve correctly.

Related Guides

• Afghanistan time zone

• Iraq time zone

• Turkey time zone

• Turkmenistan time zone

• UTC time converter

• Asia time zones