Coat of arms of Iran

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The coat of arms of Iran features a stylized Arabic script of the word Allah (God), in Arabic alphabet ﺍﷲ.

The symbol consists of four crescents and a sword. The four crescents are meant to stand for the word Allah (there is indeed some resemblance to the Arabic writing of it). The five parts of the emblem symbolize the five pillars of Islam. Above the sword is a shadda: in Arabic writing, this is used to double a letter, here it doubles the strength of the sword. The shape of the emblem is chosen to remind of a tulip, for the memory of the people who died for Iran: it is an ancient belief in Iran, dating back to mythology, that if a young soldier dies patriotically a red tulip will grow on his grave. In recent years it is considered as the symbol of martyrdom.

The symbol was designed by Hamid Nadimi, and was officially approved by Ayatollah Khomeini on May 9, 1980. The exact shape of the emblem and a compass and straightedge construction is described in the national Iranian standard ISIRI 1.

Dissidents refer to the symbol as the "bloody fork". Another derisive name for the symbol is "spider mark".

The symbol is encoded in Unicode, in the Miscellaneous Symbols range, at codepoint U+262B (☫).

Similarities between the symbol with the Khanda symbol of the Sikh, and menorah of the Jews, are probably a coincidence. A large number of Iranians claim that Khomeini's Indian heritage led to the cultural appropriation of this symbol from Indian Sikhs. These claims, however, have not been substantiated.