The objective was to examine the contribution of lexical and nonlexical processes to skilled reading and spelling in Persian. 61 high-school students (mean age =17; 8) attending schools in Iran were tested on reading and spelling of words and nonwords. The word differed in terms of reading transparency (transparent vs. opaque) and spelling polygraphy (nonpolygraphic vs. polygraphic phonemes). The reading results showed that both transparent and opaque words were read faster than nonwords. Moreover, both transparent and opaque words were affected by word frequency. These findings suggest that skilled readers of Persian relied on lexical processes to read words. In contrast, the spelling results failed to show a word-advantage effect suggesting that skilled spellers of Persian rely on nonlexical processes to spell words.