TEHRAN – Fabrizio Cassinelli, a journalist of the Italian ANSA News Agency, has penned a personal experience of her trip to Iran in the book “L’Iran Svelato” (Iran Unveiled).

In a report published by ANSA on December 20, the travelogue gives more information about Iran as viewed by a foreigner as a country yet to be discovered.

The book begins with the Persian proverb saying, “Remember! You can close the city gates, but not the mouths of the people”, and continues, “And it is in this spirit that, three years ago, I decided to go to Iran to see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears what really happened in that country and what lies beneath (there) in the new Persia.

“I aimed to discover the words that sum up the sudden transformation that enabled the Islamic Republic to go from ‘Public Enemy No. 1’ to the ‘No.1 trading partner’. Something is obviously wrong,” the book says.

It continues, “Did you know that the Iranians are not Arabs; they rarely practice polygamy. Women have the right to divorce and vote, and that technology and research studies are very advanced?! That there are churches? Iran has an authoritarian government, and at the same time is a republic. What should we really expect from this country? Do not forget that Iran is home to one million refugees, they sell us oil, fight against ISIS and has never started a war.
   
“Technology and research are very advanced, 75 percent of the population is younger than 35 years old, a country that many would not know its precise geographical location, yet they think they know a lot, but almost all of it is wrong. Let’s start from here: the Iranians are not Arabs but Arians. And then, no one thinks of Iran as a country of skyscrapers, Internet and smart phones, but that’s what you would find walking around in Tehran or in another of its big cities,” says other part of the book.

The book also contains interviews with an Iranian oil expert as well Iran’s efforts in fight against drug dealers.

RM/YAW