Iran’s Shazdeh Garden, also known as the Prince’s Garden, is a surprisingly lush garden full of greenery and water fountains surrounded by arid desert.

Located 6 kilometers from the city of Mahan, in Kerman Province, Shazdeh Garden is a historical Persian garden built by the Qajar Dynasty, at the end of the 19th century. The rectangular complex is surrounded by stone walls that shield the green paradise inside from the harsh desert surrounding it. Seen from the air, Shazdeh Garden looks like a welcoming oasis in the middle of an arid sea, and it’s photos like the ones below that attract thousands of people to this place every year. It features five impressive water fountains supplied through the Qanat technique of transporting water from a well through an underground aqueduct.

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The shopping mall is considered a symbol of American consumerism and the US is indeed home to over 100,000 shopping malls, but the title of world’s biggest shopping mall actually belongs to one of America’s biggest rivals, Iran.

Located northeast of Teheran, the humongous Iran Mall shopping mall covers an area of 31 square meters and consists of seven floors, but its entire infrastructure area measures a whopping 1.35 million square meters and is set to expand to 1.60 million square meters. Since 2014, over 1,200 contractors and around 25,000 workers worked around the clock to make the world’s largest shopping mall a reality. In 2018, the first phase of construction was completed, and 267,000 square meters of gross leasable area and 708 retail units were opened on 1 May 2018. That same year, Iran Mall set a Guinness record for the world’s longest continuous pour of concrete, with tons of concrete pouring continuously for 6 consecutive days.

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The head of a property agency in Iran was recently arrested for helping a couple with no human heirs transfer the property rights to their apartment to their pet dog.

The unnamed Iranian businessman ended up in jail and had his real estate firm shut down earlier this month after a video showing him officiating an unusual property transfer went viral on social media. In the short clip, the man can be seen preparing paperwork which is then signed by a human couple, and then by their pet dog, Chester. Well, technically, the owners just took the pooch’s paw, put some ink on it, and then put it on the contract, but we guess that’s what counts as a canine signature. The agent can be heard describing the property, and once the deal is done, Chester’s owners can be seen hugging and congratulating the dog. Iranian authorities didn’t share their happiness, though…

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An Iranian man claims he stopped consuming food one day in 2006 and has relied solely on sweetened fizzy drinks for energy ever since.

58-year-old Gholamreza Ardeshiri claims that the mere sight of food makes him nauseous and that he has been surviving on water and fizzy drinks like Pepsi and Coca-Cola for the last 17 years. It all started one night in 2006, when he woke up with a strange feeling in his mouth, one that he just couldn’t get rid of, no matter how many doctors he visited. In the end, he decided to shun food permanently and has been living a perfectly normal life ever since. His family doesn’t eat in front of him, because just seeing them makes him sick, and he gets all his energy from carbonated drinks. He drinks three large bottles of soda per day and insists that he never feels hungry.

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Following a penalty shootout to their Iranian rivals in a women’s football match, Jordanian officials have called on the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to launch an investigation to determine the sex of the Iranian team’s goalkeeper.

On September 25, following a goalless draw, the Iranian and Jordanian women’s football teams went to a penalty shootout to determine who would qualify to the 2022 Women’s Asian Cup. The Jordanians were heavy favorites to win the game, but the opposing goalkeeper had other plans. Zohreh Koudae saved two penalties, securing her team’s 4-2 shootout victory, and the national team’s first-ever appearance at the Women’s Asian Cup. Only the story doesn’t end here. Jordanian officials have since called on the Asian Football Confederation to investigate whether the Iranian goalkeeper is actually a woman.

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Iran’s Dasht-e Lut desert is only the 25th largest desert in the world, but it holds the record for the highest ;and surface temperature ever recorded, over 70 degrees Celsius.

Dasht-e Lut (Persian for “Emptiness Plain”) is a large salt desert that, scientists believe, formed on the bottom of a sea. Millions of years ago, tectonic shifts caused the bottom of the sea to rise, with the water slowly evaporating due to the high temperatures. Today, it’s a barren land about 51,800 square kilometers in size, surrounded by mountains on all sides, which contributes to the record-setting temperatures recorded here, as they prevent humid air from the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas to reach it.

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An Iranian Parkour athlete and his unidentified lover were arrested last week not of their death-defying antics atop Tehran’s highest buildings, but for an “indecent” rooftop kiss.

Alireza Japalaghy, a popular Iranian parkour athlete, and his girlfriend were accused of performing “vulgar acts” and were taken into custody by police. Their arrest sparked outrage on social media, with many accusing police of taking swift action against a kissing couple, while real criminals are simply ignored. Despite facing criticism for their strict laws, Iranian authorities said that the couple’s unconventional acts went against Sharia law and needed to be dealt with.

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Authorities in Tehran, the capital city of Iran, have enforced a ban on dog walking in public places like streets and parks. The bizarre measure is part of a long-standing effort to discourage dog ownership in the Islamic country.

Tehran’s police chief, Hossein Rahimi, recently announced that he has received permission from the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office to take measures against people walking dogs in public spaces, such as parks. These measures include fines and confiscation. Apparently, dogs create “fear and anxiety” among members of the public, but many consider this recent ban to be yet another effort by Iranian authorities to discourage dog ownership. Canines are considered unclean or impure by the country’s religious leaders, and a symbol of the pro-Western policy adopted by the old Monarchy dethroned during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

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Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization, yesterday told members of the press that Israel has been stealing Iran’s clouds while also working to ensure that whatever clouds do make it into Iranian air space are unable to release rain.

Relations between Iran and Israel have always been tense, but I doubt anyone imagined one side would go as far as to accuse the other of stealing their clouds. Well, that’s exactly what happened yesterday, when, during a press conference, Iranian General Gholam Reza Jalali said that his country’s prolonged drought has been caused by foreign interference, more specifically by Israel and “another country”. Jalali tried to back up his claims by citing a survey showing that all mountainous areas above 2,200 meters between Afghanistan and the Mediterranean are covered in snow, except those in Iran.

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Iranian actors dressed as Islamic State fighters recently stormed a shopping mall in Teheran, in an attempt to promote a new film about a father and son who travel to Syria to deliver humanitarian supplies but end up kidnapped by ISIS. Unfortunately, their performance was a bit too good, and caused some shoppers to run for their lives.

It was supposed to be a harmless publicity stunt for Iranian director Ebrahim Hatamikia’s new film, ‘Damascus Time’, with actors dressed as ISIS militants peacefully visiting the Kourosh Complex shopping mall and cinema, in Teheran, and posing for pictures. However, the actors decided to show off their acting skills, and really got into their characters, storming the shopping complex and shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ while waving their fake firearms and machetes around. One of them actually rode through the mall on a horse, while another pretended to connect the wires on a fake bomb.

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The aptly named Salt Restaurant in Shiraz, southern Iran, is completely made of salt. The walls, bar, tables and chairs are entirely made of the white mineral; even the stairs have a smooth, salty coating.

The unique restaurant is the brainchild of Iranian firm Emtiaz Designing Group, who used salt as the main construction material in order to promote the concept of green construction. They created the building using environmentally sustainable, locally sourced, affordable salt, powder and rock. “In this particular case, the walls, structural sculptures and ceilings are made from salt sourced from the nearby salt mines and salt lake of Shiraz which was mixed with natural gum to harden it,” said a spokesperson of the firm.

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80-year-old Haji believes that “cleanliness brings him sickness.” That’s why he hasn’t bathed at all in the past 60 years. He lives in isolation in Dejgah village, in the Southern Iranian province of Fars.

Haji hates contact with water. Even the suggestion of a bath makes him very angry. And all these years of escaping bath time have taken their toll – Haji is almost the color of earth. He has managed to completely blend in with his surroundings. In fact, it’s easy to mistake him for a rock statue if he sits very still.

It’s not just bathing that Haji dislikes. His disgust for fresh food and clean drinking water is unmistakable. Instead, he prefers his favorite meal of rotten porcupine meat. He drinks 5 liters of water a day for health purposes, but only from a large rusty oil can. He likes to fill his smoking pipe with animal feces instead of tobacco. To trim his hair he doesn’t use clippers; he just burns it off over an open flame. An old war helmet keeps his head warm during the winter.

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Ninjutsu is considered to be one of the deadliest forms of martial arts in the world. But this doesn’t deter the 3,500 odd Iranian women who are currently receiving official training in the sport.

In fact, when I saw a video of these women in action, I was awestruck by their agility and the ease with which they performed gravity-defying stunts and back flips. I couldn’t even tell that the ninjas were female until they removed the masks from their faces.  Iran, like many other Islamic countries, has stringent rules regarding the freedom and conduct of women. The laws severely restrict them from participating freely in society; perhaps this is where they derive their quiet strength from. The Ninjustu school in Iran was started in 1989 by Sensei Akbar Faraji. This was the first time the martial art was introduced to the country. While the club now has over 24,000 members, the number of female participants is slowly on the rise. According to Faraji, in Ninjutsu, men are called ninjas, while women are addressed as kunoichi.

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The Khalid Nabi cemetery, in northern Iran has become a popular attraction for both locals and tourists, because of its strange tombstones shaped as male and female sexual organs.

Scientists say the bizarre cemetery is around 1,400 years old, and judging by the number of headstones, it’s the final resting place of at least 600 people, the most important of which is Khalid Nabi, a prophet born 40 years before Muhammad. You’d be inclined to be believe most people come to the cemetery as pilgrims to a prophet’s grave, but you couldn’t be more wrong; they actually come to see the penis and breast-shaped tombstones.

Nobody knows exactly what the 6-foot-tall columns shaped like phalluses and the smaller, cross like-headstones that resemble female breasts are meant to symbolize, but the mere fact that a wacky attraction like the Khalid Nabi cemetery gets this kind of attention, in a country like Iran, is weird enough. Some scientists say the weird tombstones could have been influenced by the phallic religion practiced in India and central Asia, but most of the visitors don’t even care, they just came here to see some funny penis-shaped rocks.

I’m just not sure who Iran is going to blame for this, but I’m sure they’ll somehow relate the phallus stones to some “capitalist pigs”.

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