Iran is home to a proud and ancient culture with much to offer the modern world.Credit:iStock
Everything is fine in Iran. Until it's not. Until you allegedly fly a drone without permission and you wind up in jail. Until you annoy the wrong people and find yourself incarcerated with little chance of release. A political prisoner,or perhaps not.
Then,everything is not fine in Iran. Everything is almost as bad as it could be. And you don't know when or if you'll ever get home again.
This is the situation that faces three Australians in Iran right now. Jolie King,Mark Firkin and Kylie Moore-Gilbert are all in jail. All three visited the country with,I'm sure,the highest hopes of adventure,of cultural enlightenment and of the warmest of welcomes,and all three are now behind bars.
How do you explain that away to people?
I've always supported travel to Iran. I've visited the country and absolutely loved my time there. I was constantly bowled over by the kindness of strangers in Iran,by the genuine goodwill shown towards me by people who were just happy to see that the world was still interested in their beautiful,historic home.
I strolled the choked streets of Tehran. I wandered the bazaars and the mosques of Esfahan. I explored mud-brick alleyways in Yazd. I saw the spectacular"pink mosque"in Shiraz.
I met people in Iran – so many people. Local Iranians who invited me to drink tea with them,to tour mosques with them,to explore their city with them,to eat dinner with them. I took up so many of these invitations. The experiences I had with those people changed my life and changed the way I see the world.
Friends asked me later if I was followed by the secret police in Iran and I said,I don't know. They're secret. But I certainly never felt that I was being surveilled or that I was in any way unsafe.
So yes,I tell everyone to go to Iran. Ignore the news stories. Ignore the government warnings. Ignore the threats of war and just go to this place and see it for yourself. You will love it. The bad things you've read about will all be proved false.