Purpose Tehran, Iran, is an interesting location for aerosol studies because it is affected by anthropogenic pollution and desert dust aerosols. The aim of this study was to discriminate the aerosol types using satellite data over the city. Method The study was performed using Level-2 daily Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and Ångström Exponent (AE) data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on board the Terra and Aqua satellites for the years 2011 to 2015. As the Deep Blue (DB) AE retrievals are more reliable than the Dark Target (DT) AE retrievals, the study was performed using DB data. Results The number of granules with successful retrievals (at least in two pixels with AODs >0.2 over Tehran with high quality assurance) was 200, which indicates that aerosols could be observed in 5.47% (200 from 3652 of Terra and Aqua granules) of the overpasses during the study period. The maximum and minimum values of AOD occurred during May (0.32 ± 0.27) and August (0.18 ± 0.07), respectively. Based on the AOD vs. AE data, aerosols were classified into three different categories: urban/industry (UI), Desert Dust (DD) and Mixed (Mix). To improve the accuracy of the aerosol classification, the analysis was limited to retrievals with AOD values larger than 0.2. The DD, UI and Mix types had 48.5%, 30.5% and 21% contribution in the aerosol days, respectively. Conclusions The maximum DD frequency was observed in the spring and summer seasons, while the UI type had its maximum during the cold season. The AOD of the DD type (over Tehran) correlated well with the AOD observations done at the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) site in Zanjan (300 km northwest from Tehran). For the UI type, no relationship with the AERONET AOD was detected. This gives confidence in our aerosol typing as the contribution of dust in the aerosol load is mainly from long-range transport, whereas the urban aerosols originate from local sources. Back trajectories ending in Tehran show that the northeast and west trajectories are two main transport routes for the dust to the study area.