Arak sits in Iran’s industrial heartland between Tehran, Isfahan, and Hamadan. Its inland location provides strategic depth while rail and road links connect it to national production and distribution networks.

The city’s modern rise began in the 20th century with state-led industrialisation. Concentration of heavy manufacturing made Arak a backbone city for Iran’s self-sufficiency strategy in energy, rail, and industrial machinery.

Arak was deliberately planned in the early twentieth century as an industrial city, and Pahlavi-era investment expanded its state-owned factories producing machinery, chemicals, and aluminium. After 1979 the city was integrated into the defence and energy supply chains of the Islamic Republic.

In the 2000s Arak gained international prominence when the IR-40 heavy water reactor under construction nearby was revealed to be capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. Negotiations under the JCPOA resulted in the reactor core being filled with concrete, but this remains a contested element of Iran’s nuclear file. Severe industrial pollution and aquifer depletion have become major structural challenges for the city.

Today Arak hosts major machine-building, rail equipment, and energy-industry plants, some linked indirectly to military and nuclear supply chains. Air pollution and labor unrest periodically intersect with its strategic role.