The result is that the fly-in Western reporter is often misled, by Patrick ClawsonMiddle East QuarterlySpring 2007

Patrick Clawson, senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and co-author, with Michael Rubin, of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Washington: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2005).
Iran in Books . Review Essay

Iran may seem like a difficult country for Americans to get to know. It has been almost three decades since Washington and Tehran have had diplomatic relations. The Islamic Republic gives few Americans visas and, counting all diplomats and businessmen and their spouses, only about 3,000 Westerners live among the seventy million Iranians.[1] Many tourists avoid a country more associated in the popular mind with mass "Death to America" rallies than its art and architecture. Nor can Iranians easily explain their own country to the West: Iranian authorities have long railed against a "Western culture invasion" and, in recent years, they have intimidated intellectuals and academics, arresting several on allegations of participating in U.S.-funded plots to undermine the regime.[2]
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