For those curious about how and where the whole "Iran thing" started: A freely elected Iranian president decided to nationalise oil fields. This irked British Petroleum (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company at the time..) and the USA, so they initiated a coup to overthow the government [1], complete with CIA-paid Iranian mobsters to push the Shah regime.
Years after this imposed rule, the western-propped government was overthrown with an.. anti-western government.
If you look at Iran with the context of 15 - 20 years history, it's impossible to understand the government's rabid anti-west stance. If you zoom out a little bit more - you understand completely.
Finally - the Iranian people suffer incredibly under this regime. The Persian culture has over 5000 years of rich (non-islamic, incidentally..) history. I'd sincerely advise traveling to Iran if you'd like to understand geo-politics a little better.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution
EDIT - Does not mean you are playing this timeline game. I meant a few others.
Btw one addition - we all know that US embassy was stormed and employees held hostage in 1979. It gave US political ammunition for decades to come. Do you know why it was stormed? Because it was proper CIA headquarters in all this meddling and impoverishment of iranian people for decades. They shielded themselves with diplomatic immunity. Not something you see mentioned in the (rather bad for all that empty patriotism) movies. But wouldn't you be pissed off if they did this to your own country? To have the potential for greatness due to rich oil reserves, but having little from it because some foreign power installs corrupt ruler to have safe access to oil. Sounds like an african story.
Those employees taken? Most were involved or directly in CIA payroll. No respect there, nor much sympathy. Spies are generally either executed or traded for.
I'd second this, one of the friendliest country I've ever been to. No significant tourist industry yet so most people are not trying to sell you anything. I think it's a genuine wish to be friendly to travellers and especially so given they don't yet get many travellers.
You're somewhat curtailed as a US traveller (not sure if that's still the case) but for anybody else, go.
One tech curiosity from over there: one guy said he used a USB stick that contained his browser and stored his internet history on the stick when in internet cafes (his only way online). That way when the cafe was audited none of his data would be there for inspection by police/security.
Even if a cafe uses some sort of sandbox environments that are wiped after each visitor, there's a danger that you'll bring in a ‘Scriptkiddie 2019’ exploit pack on the stick.
Naturally there's variation on this (Tehran vs. Qu'om / Mashaad) - but at least that was my experience from living and speaking.
I am not sure what the fact that Iran is a thousand year civilisation has anything to do with it. China is a thousand year civilisation too, it didn't become less communist nevertheless.
Unless you're gay, in which case they reserve the right to execute you. Seems worth mentioning.