Rick Steves’ travels in Iran

I didn’t know what to expect. when you go to challenging corners, you get excited, and then you realize it’s just regular people. The expectation of theocracy was an interesting theme: what did the State require of its people and how did people live in those constraints? (Where did you go to find out more?) We had ten days of filming which we divided between Tehran and then some historical capitols. We stopped at some villages along the way as well. The Iranian government allowed us to be there, and provided us with a minder or guide. He was a real benefit. (What did he stop you from doing?) We couldn’t shoot anything of military interest or related to their nuclear program. (Did you hear any anti-American comments?) People would come up to me and ask me where I’m from, and my routine was to ask them where they thought I was from. And they would guess eight or ten different countries and then I’d say America. And they say, we like America. Honestly they were shocked and then they would say they really like America. They’d say they dislike our president but distinguish between the people and our president. (When it comes to politics, you talked to a lot of people. Introduce this one clip.) Here’s an example of how our minder would help in asking people about politics. [clip.] (So there’s your minder expressing his own opinion. It was interesting when you went to a mosque and thinking this is kind of like Norwegian Lutheran worshipers.) Well it’s easy to make Muslims praying somehow menacing. And I wanted to compare it to religious services that we’re more familiar with. But these were just people going to their weekly religious service. In terms of the �Death to Israel� signs one sees in Iran, our minder explained it as they would say �Death to� something that they can’t control, like �Death to traffic.� (What was the most insight you got into why there would be a �Death to Israel� sign in a mosque?) It becomes kind of a background noise. Remember, Iran is a theocracy. This became a dreary, monotonous thing, a kind of blinding propaganda. This relates to the Soviet Union in many ways, it’s just something that is a reality because of their political system. But people still go home and play video games or watch TV.