Iran is a country full of historical, cultural and natural attractions, but it has not had a successful record in accepting foreign tourists and the number of foreign tourists entering this country is not comparable to the number of tourists entering neighboring countries such as Turkey or the UAE. It seems that one of the main reasons for this is inconsistency between the government's view of foreign tourists and the definition of foreign tourists by the Iranians. While the government has no desire or at least no specific plan to accept western tourists due to security reasons and has focused on the development of religious tourism and hosting Shia tourists from neighboring countries, from the point of view of many Iranians, Arabs, Afghans or Pakistanis cannot be considered as foreign tourists and even in many cases they are against the presence of this group of tourists in Iran. This lecture is based on the document studies that the researcher had, especially focusing on the reflection of the topics related to tourists entering Iran in the media, as well as the field research that is currently being conducted in the north of Iran, where Arab tourists are very interested in being there, seeks to show the reasons and cultural and social contexts of such a contradiction in the view to the foreign tourists in Iran.
