in one pole of the continuum of language learning, theoreticians and practitioners traditionally consider english as english as a second language or english as a foreign language. however, in the other pole of this continuum where english is thought of as the most effective tool for international communication, it is referred to as a lingua franca. those who favor an approach to english growing worldwide believe that the idea that english is considered as the language of the world today is largely the result of linguistic imperialism .while such areas as native speakerism and linguistics imperialism have presented some novel approaches to english language teaching (elt) in recent years, there are still gaps in this area for further studies and research to address this gap, one of the major purpose of conducting the present study was to investigate iranian efl teachers ideas regarding the condition of english as a lingua franca. for this purpose, an interview was developed and 25 iranian efl teachers were interviewed.