Iranian plateau

The Iranian plateau or Persian plateau is a geological feature spanning parts of West Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia. It makes up part of the Eurasian Plate, and is wedged between the Arabian Plate and the Indian Plate. The plateau is situated between the Zagros Mountains to the west, the Caspian Sea and the Köpet Dag to the north, the Armenian Highlands and the Caucasus Mountains to the northwest, the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf to the south, and the Indian subcontinent to the east. As a historical region, it includes Parthia, Media, Persis, and some of the previous territories of Greater Iran. The Zagros form the plateau's western boundary, and its eastern slopes may also be included in the term. The Encyclopædia Britannica excludes "lowland Khuzestan" explicitly and characterizes Elam as spanning "the region from the Mesopotamian plain to the Iranian plateau". From the Caspian in the northwest to Balochistan in the southeast, the Iranian plateau extends for close to . It encompasses a large part of Iran, all of Afghanistan, and the parts of Pakistan that are situated to the west of the Indus River, covering an area of some . In spite of being called a plateau, it is far from flat, and contains several mountain ranges; its highest point is Noshaq in the Hindu Kush at , and its lowest point is the Lut Desert to the east of Kerman, Iran, at below . In geology, the plateau region of Iran primarily formed from the accretionary Gondwanan terranes between the Turan platform to the north and the Main Zagros Thrust; the suture zone between the northward moving Arabian plate and the Eurasian continent is the Iranian plateau. It is a geologically well-studied area because of general interest in continental collision zones, and because of Iran's long history of research in geology, particularly in economic geology (although Iran's major oil reserves are not in the plateau). The Iranian plateau in geology refers to a geographical area north of the great folded mountain belts resulting from the collision of the Arabian Plate with the Eurasian Plate.