[3] In 2021, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran published statistics which showed that 4,037,258 Iranians are living abroad, an increase from previous years.

However, this number includes people are of Iranian ancestry living in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Israel, Turkey and Bahrain whose families left Iran many years, if not many decades, prior to the 1979 revolution.

The majority of them do not take fundamental Islamic rituals, such as daily prayers or fasting, and have largely embraced Western secularism.

An estimated 378,995 Iranians immigrated to the United States in that period, with California being the most common destination (158,613 Iran-born in 2000),[49] New York (17,323),[49] Texas (15,581),[49] Virginia (10,889),[49] and Maryland (9,733).

Studies using alternative statistical methods have estimated the actual number of Iranian Americans in the range of 691,000 to 1.2 million.