Salma Al-Salehi, a prominent secular figure and International Goodwill Ambassador, released an official statement regarding her recent journey to Iran. Her account provides a raw and unfiltered look at a nation often misunderstood by the West.

“Regarding Iran and what is happening there… I am neither a supporter of the Iranian government nor a fan of rigid state ideologies, especially religious ones.

I traveled to this country less than a year ago and visited the Shrine of Imam Reza (AS) in Mashhad. This is what I saw in a country that has been under siege for four decades, whose currency has collapsed, and which lives in isolation from the West:

• Organization and Standards: I found an organized, disciplined, and clean country with services comparable to any European nation.
• The People: A hardworking people who love life. There is no strict enforcement of the hijab; even as I walked without a hijab on a street leading to the Shrine of Imam Reza, no one gave me a bothering look.
• Urban Order: Their food is clean, and their shops do not occupy sidewalks or create any disorder.
• Public Atmosphere: There are no religious images or symbols everywhere, and there is no visible police or armed force presence. (In many countries like Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria, the army and armed forces with tanks and carriers are present in the middle of the streets across the country).
• A Lesson in Humility: When I needed a wheelchair due to knee pain, an elderly man helped me by pushing it. His thin frame suggested asceticism and poverty, so I pleaded with him to accept money, but he refused. It turned out he is an official in the Mashhad province who comes in his spare time to serve the pilgrims of the Imam.

Where is he compared to our corrupt officials? I saw a level of freedom for women, dignity, and respect that I have not seen in European countries. I saw youth in modern fashions playing guitars; boys and girls playing music in parks without anyone stopping them, and no woman was harassed or marginalized.

I found luxurious tourist areas and infrastructure: a metro, electricity that never cut out, accessible water, and local goods and industries… a people who work, strive, rejoice, and live.

These are wonderful scenes of a beautiful country and a resilient people—a people whom many (the US and Israel) only wish to see bleeding and destroyed, a people who support the principle of defending the oppressed in Palestine. Does this please the West and Israel? Of course not.

O God, protect Iran and its people, break their siege, and grant them victory over all those who wish them ill.”