26 Jan Iran — Nobody Wants You To Go To Iran

Citizens of almost any place in the world can pick up a visa upon arrival at the airport in Tehran. Those of us who live in Britain, Canada or the Great Satan can’t even apply for a visa. We have to apply for permission to apply for a visa . . . which means sending in a form four months in advance setting out, among other things, the complete itinerary of our hoped-for visit along with a curriculum vitae for the past 15 years . . . where we worked, what we did, what our employers did . . . and then waiting three of the four months while they check our bona fides. The people who don’t check out, the ones they don’t want in their country, are employees of “certain” US government agencies, and those of us with a history of practicing journalism.

They also seem to care a lot about protecting their women from malign foreign influences. You can see it in banners hanging from the sides of buildings.

    Foreign influences goad a woman to cast aside her modesty

How malign your influence might be is, apparently, what they spend the three months researching.

If you pass muster they’ll favor you with a document granting permission to apply for a visa. This lets you fill out an application, slip the document, the application, your passport, a couple of photos and a money order into an envelope and . . . Iran not having an embassy in the US . . . mail the envelope to the Islamic Republic of Iran Interest Section at the Embassy of Pakistan. Which leaves you with the uncomfortable thought that, I just sent my passport to Pakistan.

If you’re willing to put up with all this, the State Department tag-teams you with this message on its website:

“Do not travel to Iran due to the risk of kidnapping, arrest, detention of U.S. citizens.”

In case you didn’t get the point, the very next sentence hits you with the same thing all over again. “There is a very high risk of kidnapping, arrest, and detention of U.S. citizens in Iran . . . .”

If you still insist on going, the site “highly encourages” you to register with the American embassy so that our folks in Tehran will know you’re in country – and can help you get back out of the country when things go awry. Since we don’t actually have an embassy in Iran, it’s hard to see how this would work. A British lady who traveled with us got the same advice from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, registered with the British embassy in Tehran, and got a note back instructing her to appoint a hostage negotiator before setting out. She sent in the name of her 14-month-old granddaughter on the grounds of, “that girl always knows what she wants.”

When you actually get to the country, traveling with a group is pretty much de rigueur on account of you aren’t allowed go anywhere without a guide. (“Guide” is Farsi for “minder.”) After you go home, your guide heads down to the Internal Security Police and reports on you.

One of our guides told me he hated doing that, not because he felt like he was betraying his clients, but because the police want to hear bad things the tourists did, regardless of whether the tourists actually did anything bad. “They ask me where the tourists wanted to go and what they took pictures of and what they talked about. I tell them they went to Persepolis and took pictures of the Gate of All Nations and talked about Alexander the Great, and the police get mad and threaten to pull my license.”

 Big Mullah keeps a close eye on the ladies. On you, too.

At the end of our trip we flew from Shiraz to Tehran to catch our plane home. Tehran has two airports. The old airport, for domestic flights, and the brand new Imam Khomeini International Airport City, for international travel. On a good day, meaning at midnight when traffic is lightest, these airports are an hour-and-a-half apart. Our guide arranged for a cab to meet us.

The driver was more than accommodating, even by the standards of Iranian hospitality. He insisted on carrying our bags into the terminal . . . even though all we had were carry-ons, and the carry-ons had wheels.

Then he insisted on waiting in line with us.

And accompanying us to the ticket counter, and on through to emigration . . . at which point he couldn’t insist any more so, pulling out his phone, he took a selfie of the three of us with the emigration booth in the background. “To remember you by.”

To REMEMBER us by? This guy was a cab driver.

Or, when I thought about it, something more than a cab driver. The selfie documented the fact that he’d gotten us out of the country.