The administrative head of the Institute in Zanjan gave me and Mohammad a ride from Zanjan to Tehran. At one point I had him stop, and I ran across the highway to take a picture of an interesting banner hung on a toll booth. Since the banner had a religious message, I first gestured and asked the toll booth guy if it was OK to take a photo. He said sure...and then one of his friends who had just gone off-shift realized I was a foreigner and invited me into the office for tea. He and his friends (pictured above) gave breakfast to the three of us, and made small talk. When they invited me to come in for tea, they just knew I was a westerner, but they became even more welcoming when they found out I'm from the U.S.
I encountered no anti-Americanism at all, arguably with one exception discussed below. Several taxi drivers asked if there's a job for them in America (I said "Hey, if you can get to New York, you can start tomorrow.") Many of the grad students at the institute expressed interest in studying in the U.S. and asked about opportunities to do so. Several merchants said they wished more Americans would come, since business has never been the same since the revolution. And some ordinary people said to please let everyone in the U.S. know that we are all welcome there.
The only exception to the generally welcoming attitude took place at a hotel in Esfahan (somewhat surprising, since Esfahan is Iran's most popular tourist city for both Iranians and foreigners). Mohammad, his wife Shahla, and I checked into the "Hotel Tourist", where the guy at the desk expressed some concern about my U.S. passport---"He's from America...I'm not sure if this is OK...is it really OK?" My friends assured him that there's no problem, and he gave us a room. But later, when we passed the desk he expressed some reservations, and finally he said "I should call," and picked up the phone and called the police. According to my friend, his side of the conversation was something like "Hello, this is the Hotel Tourist. I have a guy staying here who is from America. Is that OK? Yes, he has a visa. Yes, it hasn't expired...yes...yes...so it's OK? Really, it's OK? He's from America and he can stay here? OK, thanks." And he gave me my key.
Mohammad was irritated by this, but Shahla was just furious. As we went up to the rooms, she said "we are NOT staying here", and sure enough, she went to their room and started calling other hotels to find one for us. (All of these calls had to be placed by the guy at the desk, by the way). Finally she found a hotel for us. We went down to leave, with her a little ahead of Mohammad and me, and by the time we got to the desk she was giving the guy a piece of her mind: "This country has enough problems without people like you behaving this way. Americans think they aren't welcome here, and everyone in the whole country tries to show that isn't true, and then we come here and some idiot like you spoils it..." and so on. In a way, this exchange was informative about women in Iran as much as anything: there was certainly no feeling that she couldn't act this way because of her sex.