Despite the Iranian government's strict ban on the consumption of Western music, film, television and culture, the Iranian public's thirst for such forms of art and entertainment is unrelenting, and sometimes, the government gives in. Since the first days after the Islamic Republic of Iran was formed, with Shia leaders replacing the former Iranian monarchy as the country's new leadership, everything "Western" was denounced. Besides its claimed religious mandate to condemn W

Iran is full of remarkable architecture, of the sort that makes geologists, archeologists, historians, and theologians around the world marvel. Whether it is a spectacular mosque built in such a way that the afternoon sun glistens the image of a golden peacock upon its already tile-embroidered ceiling, a traditional tea house alight with the arches and stained glass windows of another millennia, a pavilion architecturally designed to be an object of pleasure, an enchanted fer