A growing interest in microwave heating has emerged recently. Several potential microwave applications regarding minerals' processing have been investigated. This paper investigates the effect of microwave radiation on Egyptian high phosphorus iron ore. Three different iron ore samples have varying Fe2O3 and P2O5 contents and mineralogical textures were studied. A comparative study has been carried out between untreated and microwave treated iron ore. XRD and FTIR analyses showed that after microwave radiation the crystallinity of iron bearing minerals (hematite) increased, while the functional chemical groups of phosphorus bearing minerals (fluorapatite) and other gangues dissociated. High resolution XPS analyses of Fe 2p peaks showed that after microwave radiation a portion of Fe(+III) was reduced to Fe(+II). This means that after microwave radiation iron oxide (hematite, Fe3+) transformed into more magnetic phase. The results indicated that microwave radiation had a positive effect on the magnetic properties of iron oxide, through formation of ferromagnetic phases. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.