Thanks to its glittering mosques, breathtaking landscapes, ancient ruins and, believe it or not, ski resorts, Iran’s tourism industry underwent an extraordinary boom after the landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
Tourists flocked to the Middle Eastern country to discover cultural treasures largely unseen by western eyes since the 1979 Islamic revolution, and found the cost of staying there relatively cheap.
But this week’s decision by Donald Trump to pull the US out of the agreement, which could trigger its collapse and inflame an already tense region, is stoking fears that Iran’s tourism sector could slide back into the doldrums.
“After Barjam [the Persian acronym for the joint comprehensive plan of action on Iran’s nuclear programme] we saw a huge growth in our tourism sector – I worked as a guide all year long,” said Ali Sheibani, a 30-year-old Iranian tour guide.
He has been operating for seven years in Isfahan, the country’s top tourist destination, and Shiraz, close to Persepolis, with its relics of a proud ancient civilisation. “Before [the deal],” he said, “if you’d see a foreign tourist, it was as if you were seeing an alien, someone from space, and people would encircle them to talk to them. Foreign tourists would be treated as celebrities – but now it’s less like that. It has become common to see tourists.”
But Sheibani fears that Trump’s decision will reverse the trend. “It could have a psychological impact. If Iran is back in the news, people hesitate to travel … The other problem would be for big Iranian tour operators to continue working with European firms [due to sanctions and banking issues].”
Sheibani is still hopeful – saying that Americans make up only a small proportion of tourists visiting Iran, who are mainly from Asia and Europe. Nearly half of foreign tourists come for a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mashhad, the site of the Imam Reza shrine.
More than 85,000 foreign travellers visited Isfahan in one month last year, the Tehran Times reported, saying that it was a record for the past 40 years. “Our biggest problem, however, is lack of investment. In Isfahan, our biggest touristic destination, we only have two five-star hotels,” said Sheibani.
Last year, more than 6 million foreign tourists visited Iran, which is home to 22 Unesco world heritage sites. Ali Asghar Mounesan, the head of Iran’s tourism organisation, has said the country wants to attract 20 million visitors a year by 2025 (a theoretical $25bn revenue). This year, the city of Hamadan – where Avicenna, the father of modern medicine, is buried – will host the general assembly of the world tourism organisation.
Navid Yousefian, a 30-year-old entrepreneur, moved to Iran from the US a few years ago before setting up the popular See You in Iran Facebook group, which has more than 145,000 members. He said one of the most significant effects of the Iran deal on the tourism sector was that it persuaded the moderate government to launch a visa on arrival system in Iran’s airports.
“The tension in Iran’s government over tourism is quite explicit,” he said. “The hardliners are concerned with ‘west-toxification’ on the cultural and economic level, and the moderate side considers tourism as a way of compensating for economic mismanagement in the country.
“Having the US exit the deal, and consequently the European countries doing the same in the near future for economic benefit, the moderates’ upper hand on the issue could be easily cut off.”
Ghoncheh Ghavami, a British-Iranian woman who spent five months in jail in Iran for campaigning to allow women to watch men’s volleyball in stadiums, said ordinary people in Iran would bear the brunt of Trump’s decision.
“An escalation in tensions between the Iranian establishment and the US government has always been used domestically as a way to quell social and popular demands. We were detained a few days ago because of distributing leaflets for protection of women and the police told us: ‘You need to be in Syria to understand what’s security.’”
She added: “Iranian conservatives have been vociferous before the nuclear deal until today that the US is not to be trusted and now they feel vindicated and say, ‘We told you so.’”
One Isfahani said that under the hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “I swear to God, we would rarely see any tourists, but that changed in the past two or three years.”
Trump’s decision, he hoped, would have limited impact. “I’m sure these tourists will return to their countries and recount good memories from Iran. No tourists will leave Iran disappointed.”
