South West Asian

Western Asia
Area	6,255,160 km2 (2,415,131 sq mi)a
Population  • Density	313,428,000a  50.1/km2 (130/sq mi)
Countries	23 (20 recognized, 3 unrecognized)  Abkhazia  Armenia  Artsakh  Azerbaijan  Bahrain  Cyprus  Georgia  Iran  Iraq  Israel  Jordan  Kuwait  Lebanon  Northern Cyprus  Oman  Palestine  Qatar  Saudi Arabia  South Ossetia  Syria  Turkey  UAE  Yemen
Nominal GDP	$2.742 trillion (2010)
GDP per capita	$8748 (2010)
Time zones	UTC+02:00 UTC+03:00 UTC+03:30 UTC+04:00 UTC+04:30
Notes a Area and population figures include the Sinai.

Western Asia, West Asia, Southwestern Asia or Southwest Asia is the westernmost subregion of Asia. The concept is in limited use, as it significantly overlaps with the Middle East (or the Near East), the main difference usually being the exclusion of the majority of Egypt (which would be counted as part of North Africa) and the inclusion of the Caucasus. The term is sometimes used for the purposes of grouping countries in statistics. The total population of Western Asia is an estimated 300 million as of 2015.

In an unrelated context, the term is also used in ancient history and archaeology to divide the Fertile Crescent into the "Asiatic" or "Western Asian" cultures as opposed to ancient Egypt. As a geographic concept, Western Asia includes the Levant, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Iran, the Armenian Highlands, the South Caucasus, the Arabian peninsula as well as the Sinai Peninsula, making Egypt a transcontinental country. Although the term "Western Asia" is mostly used as a convenient division of contemporary sovereign states into a manageable number of world regions for statistical purposes, it is sometimes used instead of the more geopolitical term "Middle East", for example by the Government of Canada.