a country · IranIran

A large regional destination that operates outside the international payment system. Iran's tourism minister said in June 2025 that the country had received 1.2 million health travellers in the previous Iranian year, generating more than two billion dollars, and set a target of more than two million a year under the Seventh Development Plan. The patients come from neighbouring states; the work is cosmetic surgery, fertility treatment and general specialist care.

The figure is an announcement rather than a series. Seyyed Reza Salehi-Amiri, the tourism minister, gave 1.2 million and "more than $2 billion in revenue" for the Iranian year 1403, which ran from 21 March 2024 to 20 March 2025, and the same statement carried the Seventh Development Plan's targets of more than two million travellers and revenue of around six billion dollars.

This directory carries the number and says what it is: a minister's total, reported in the press, with no published definition, no breakdown and no method. It is the only official figure for Iran read for this record.

Trade practice — the patients come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Oman and Pakistan, and the single best-known product is rhinoplasty, which Tehran performs at a volume that has made it a national joke as well as an industry.

Inference — sanctions shape everything about how this trade works. A patient cannot pay an Iranian hospital by international card or bank transfer, so money arrives as cash, through exchange houses, or through an agency abroad. That makes the flow hard to audit from outside, hard for a foreign insurer to touch, and unusually dependent on brokers — and it means the revenue figure in the minister's statement rests on estimates of cash.

Trade practice — the flow runs outward too. Iranians travel to Türkiye and the Gulf for care they cannot get at home or cannot get quickly, and for procedures involving imported devices that sanctions have made scarce.

Trade practice — a foreign patient is usually brought in by an agency that handles the visa, the airport pickup, the hospital and the hotel as one price, quoted in dollars and settled in cash on arrival. Prices are low in hard currency because the rial is weak, and they move with the exchange rate rather than with the medicine.

As of 16 September 2026 the 1403 figure remains the most recent official total read for this record. It is carried with medium confidence and marked for verification.