Iran - About the Country

Iran is a country of the Middle East. It lies between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian. Down its western flank, from the Turkish frontier along Iraq to the Gulf of Oman, run the Zagros mountains. Zard Kuh-e Bakhtiari is the highest peak (4,309 m asl) located in the southern part of this mountain range. In the north, Iran has a border to Afghanistan and in the east to India The southeasternmost coast lies at the Indian Ocean.

While the country tries to attract foreign tourists by making their caves and other sites more interesting and developing the infrastructure, this actually fails. The sites are nevertheless frequented by inland tourism, some new show caves show enormous numbers of visitors (Ali Sadr V=400,000/a [2000]). The lack of foreign tourists is a result of the facts that many governments publish warnings, not to travel to Iran. Due to the religious struggles, political uproar, terrorism, and lack of predictability of legal decisions in combination with medieval punishments, it is rather dangerous for tourists.