The Iranian peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly on the Iranian plateau and beyond in central, southern, and southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe. As a group of people, they are predominantly defined along linguistic lines as speaking the Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family. They are spread across the Iranian plateau, stretching from the Hindu Kush to central Anatolia and from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf - a region that is sometimes termed Greater Iran.Speakers of Iranian languages, however, were once found throughout Eurasia, from the Balkans to western China. As Iranian people are not confined to the borders of the current state of Iran, the term Iranic peoples is sometimes used to avoid confusion with the citizens of Iran
