DOSSIER – Iran Wonders

Modern megacities and villages, remote plateaus and deserts, mysticism and unbridled trading, sublime poetry and capital punishment, exquisite crafts and widespread torture, the most welcoming people closed off from the world, highly qualified women encased in their hijabs. Visitors are immediately required to disguise themselves (the women) or become accomplices (the men)…

Every true Iranian is taught to develop at least two personalities, often at odds with each other. A culture that promotes the principle of complete contradiction, produces genial tacticians and diplomats who give their Western colleagues, bound by their causal reasoning, a hard time… maybe it can be put down to the subtlety of Shiite thinking, or the bittersweet intrigue of its cuisine… whatever the reason, Iranian irrationality has been making a name for itself in recent years.