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I’ll end with some final thoughts, organized as an FAQ.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of people have asked me this question post-trip. In short, the answer is yes. I never felt like I was in any sort of danger, or even remotely close to being in any sort of danger, the entire week. I don’t know what the crime statistics are like, but I suspect this is quite a bit above average for a country of Iran’s development. The authoritarian theocracy probably helps tamp down on many types of crime…
tl;dr, not as weird as you might expect. There were of course crazy things, which I’ve tried to document, like the currency, anti-American preaching, lack of Western brands, etc. But, it often didn’t feel that different from being in another developing nation. I would’ve totally believed various bits of Iran being in e.g. China or Uzbekistan. This was a bit surprising, as Iran is often lumped in with e.g. North Korea, so I was expecting something more akin to that. And I don’t think I ever felt in five days in the DPRK that we could’ve been somewhere else or that things weren’t absolutely crazy. Part of this I’m sure is due to the different degrees of latitude given to tourists. But even that is indicative of Iran just being a much more “normal” place. The comparison to Uzbekistan is a useful one I think - I’d describe Iran as a less-touristed, more beautiful, and more developed Uzbekistan, with a more interesting history as well.
Of course, there are some important caveats here. First, I don’t want to minimize the ways in which Iran’s regime is awful and terrible to e.g. journalists, dissidents, members of the LGBT community, etc. There are some things that just aren’t apparent in a nine-day vacation. And second, I think my experience was strongly influenced by my gender. In particular, I imagine Iran would’ve felt more alien and perhaps restrictive if I had needed to wear a hijab for nine days while in public.
Broadly, it did not feel that way to me. A lot of this was colored by Q though, who was the Iranian we talked the most with, and seemed almost militantly secular. For example, within an hour of landing, he described Qom as the “capital of the devils, the mullahs,” and decried the societal waste of religious students. He also made disparaging comments about religion overall, e.g. describing it as “nonsense and superstition,” and saying that they’re all the same. Weirdly, he apparently has a family member who was a Christian preacher in Boise, Idaho?? I was pretty taken aback by this. Neither Dore nor I are religious, and while it’s probably the case that
Pr(religious American and visiting Iran) < Pr(religious American)
it still seemed a bit forward / just not a good idea? Regardless, I suspect he isn’t representative, but in his telling, much of Iran is more secular than is often assumed, but religious hardliners still hold the power.
There is definitely not free internet access, but my understanding is that most people have a VPN so this isn’t a problem. My experience was mostly of confusion, as their policing seemed pretty inconsistent. For example, Facebook was blocked, but Instagram is hugely popular and widely used. In addition, messenger.com worked for the first five days before mysteriously stopping. The NYTimes loaded no problem (unlike in the Doha airport where it was blocked), including recent articles with unflattering portrayals of Iran. But, the BBC was blocked (I was trying to keep up with Brexit news). Wikipedia was as far as I could tell unrestricted, including articles that I would’ve described as politically sensitive.
Yes.
Mostly, I’d say yes. I had a great time and felt like the tour was very well organized and put together upon arrival. The hotels were good quality (3-4 stars) and Q was fantastic. There were some papercuts in planning the trip beforehand, but I suspect that that’s true with any tour company. And the ability to customize our itinerary was fantastic - I was really happy with the changes I had made.
Converting to dollars, purchases generally seemed about five to ten times cheaper than in the U.S. As an extreme example, there was a package of snacks available in the hotel minibar Shiraz that was four cents! Probably their recent currency devaluation has “helped” in this respect. For reference, we paid Key2Persia $1355 / person for the tour, which included breakfasts, lunches, the hotels, and Q’s services and car. Basically, everything aside from dinner and flights to/from Iran. I think this was probably not the cheapest way to go, given the nice-ish hotels, private guide, etc. But I was very happy to pay that much to visit the country. The cheapest Western-company-run tour I could find is this one by Lupine Travel, a company I’ve read good things about and been meaning to try.
If anyone’s interesting in helping me close out the Axis of Evil with a trip to Iraqi Kurdistan, please get in touch.