Good friends of mine, Amy Carr and Robert Johnson, have traveled overland from Europe through the Middle East and India on their way to their new home in Australia.
They spent several weeks in Iran and loved it. Their summary says it all: The press plays up fear to sell newspapers.
http://journals.aol.co.uk/...
Bob is a funny writer, and if you surf around their blog you'll find a lot of good travel writing about riding a bike in the States and Canada, and travel around Europe and the Middle East.
Iran. Iran! What can we say! It was so lovely, such a complete surprise for us to find an hospitable, proud, educated, ancient, cultured society where we had been led by the press to expect mad mullahs in the desert. Everybody we have met who has been there has loved it as much as we did, and everyone who has not been there is skeptical. Yet again it confirms my belief that the press is out there to scare us all into staying locked indoors, just to sell news.
Don't make war! The experience of seeing Iran has affected me so much that, whereas before, I regarded anti-war protesters as somewhat innocent tree huggers, I would now join a march to protest about any military action against people who spent an entire month bending over backwards to be hospitable to us, complete strangers. And we are from a land that their government wastes their money telling them is "the enemy". Don't prove the mad mullahs right! It is exactly what they want! The people deserve better treatment, to be sure, but military might will only alienate them further, and play into the hands of the extremists.