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Recently on a bus trip from Rasht, Iran, to Tehran, Iran, the driver's assistant came down the bus aisle, ordering all the curtains closed on one side, and for a few minutes we were actually forbidden from looking out the windows on that side!

I can only assume he didn't want a hassle with military or something with people seeing ... 'something'? It was a local bus, mostly (we were the only foreigners as far as I know), and was a regularly scheduled normal bus.

We'd just passed Sefid Rud Lake, and heading south, it was on the right side of the bus. As best I can tell, we were on or close to this section of road in google maps (I took a GPS reading a short time later).

I'm wondering what was on that section of the road that we weren't allowed to see? I asked my Iranian friends, but they didn't know either. Just a military base or something else?

Mark Mayo
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1 Answers1

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According to this map from the Nuclear Threat Initiative (2006), your GPS reading at the western bend of the road between Rasht and Qazvin corresponds almost perfectly to "Mo-Allem Kalayeh: Suspected nuclear research center".

However! This (ancient) page gives the site's coordinates as 36°26'05"N 50°29'53"E, which is a) a lot closer to where Wikipedia thinks Moallem Kalayeh (معلم كلايه‎) is located, and b) nowhere near where you went. That said, the FAS site seems to be simply matching names to towns, so it's by no means clear which of the two is wrong...

lambshaanxy
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