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This paper presents a new approach to probabilistic seismic hazard analysis. Hazard in this context means the probability of exceeding a measure of earthquake intensity. The main components of the proposed approach are twofold: 1) Reliability methods compute the exceedance probabilities; 2) Multiple probabilistic models compute the earthquake intensity. These two components are presented in details. The proposed methodology is employed in a comprehensive seismic hazard analysis of Iran with an area of nearly 1.65 million square kilometers and 112 sources of seismicity. In this analysis, a grid of 2045 points is chosen to produce a high resolution hazard map. The analysis consists of 861 random variables and 57,615 model instances. The primary results are seismic zonation maps. The results are compared to other studies that employed the conventional seismic hazard analysis for this region. This paper concludes with a discussion on the advantages and practical differences between the results of the reliability-based approach and those of the conventional probabilistic seismic hazard analysis.