Bandar-e Mahshahr

Bandar-e Mahshahr, is a city in the Central District of Mahshahr County, Khuzestan province, Iran, serving as capital of both the county and the district.

At the 2006 National Census, its population was 109,927 in 24,110 households. The following census in 2011 counted 153,778 people in 38,301 households. The latest census in 2016 showed a population of 162,797 people in 45,208 households.

Mahshahr has two universities. Islamic Azad University of Mahshahr and Amirkabir University of Technology, Mahshahr campus. Both universities concentrate on engineering programs, especially petroleum and petrochemical engineering.

Demographics
Most of its people spoke a dialect that was a mixture of Southern Luri and Bushehri, which is still spoken by some elderly people and by younger generations mostly in rural areas (the dialect though still thrives in Hendijan and especially Genaaveh). But now Mahshahrians are mainly Persian-speaking. Local Persians are mostly of Behbahani, Qanavati, and Bandari families. There is also a local Arabic-speaking minority whose roots go back to Qabban in Iraq.

Climate
On July 31, 2015, at around 4:30 PM Iran Daylight Time (3:10 PM apparent solar time), the air temperature measured at the Bandar-e Mahshahr airport was 46 C, the dew point was 32 C, and the relative humidity was 49%. This corresponds to a wet-bulb temperature of 34.6 C, slightly below the 35 C mark that is considered the maximum humans can tolerate, above which extended exposure will lead to death. Together, the city had a heat index of 74 C, the second highest heat index ever recorded anywhere in the world.

2019 Protests
In the 2019 Iranian fuel protests, Amnesty International confirmed that security forces killed 14 protestors in Bandar-e Mahshahr, a death toll higher than that of larger cities such as Tehran or Shiraz; the New York Times reports between 40 and 100 protestors were killed in Mahshahr.

Port and Special Economic Zone
The port of Bandar-e Mahshahr is immediately adjacent to the East of the port of Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni. It is specialized in oil and petrochemical products exports. It includes a Special economic zone used by the National Iranian Petrochemical Company and the National Petrochemical Company (NPC), the Special industrial economic zones 'Petzone'.

The port of Bandar-e Mahshahr is mostly used by tanker ships and is accessible through the same channel as the port of Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni, i.e. the 42 miles long, 45 meter deep Khor Musa channel.