Iraq (Cherry, Plum, and Chrysanthemum)

Iraq (Arabic: العراق‎ al-‘Irāq), officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: جمهورية العراق Jumhūriyyat al-‘Irāq), is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.

Iraq borders Syria to the northwest, Turkey and Assyria to the north, Iran to the east, Jordan to the west, Saudi Arabia to the south and southwest, and Kuwait to the south. Iraq has a narrow section of coastline measuring 58 km on the northern Persian Gulf. The capital city, Baghdad is in the center-east of the country. Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run through the center of Iraq, flowing from northwest to southeast. These provide Iraq with agriculturally capable land and contrast with the steppe and desert landscape that covers most of Western Asia.

Iraq has been known to the west by the Greek toponym 'Mesopotamia' (Land between the rivers) and has been home to continuous successive civilizations since the 6th millennium BC. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is often referred to as the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of writing, law and the wheel. At different periods in its history, Iraq was the center of the indigenous Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian-Chaldean empires. It was also part of the Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires, and under British control as a League of Nations mandate.

Iraq's modern borders were mostly demarcated in 1920 by the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire was divided by the Treaty of Sèvres. Today areas of Iraq was placed under the authority of the United Kingdom as part of British Mandate of Mesopotamia. Mandatory Mesopotamia was consists of Arabs sectors, Kurdish sectors and Assyrian sectors. The Arab and Kurdish sectors merged and formed the independent Republic of Iraq in 1946 while the Assyrian sectors proclaimed its own independence to become the Republic of Assyria in 1948.