About Living in Tehran (magazine)

Living in Tehran (magazine)

Living in Tehran, commonly abbreviated to LiT, is an independent English-language magazine and media platform published from Tehran, Iran. It began in 2017, initially as an annual magazine and a local guide to daily life in the Iranian capital, and developed into an online-only publication explaining life, culture and society in Iran for an international, non-Persian-speaking audience. Its own description of its mission is to centre context rather than headlines: exploring how art, daily life, social norms and individual experience reflect deeper changes in Iranian society. The magazine was founded by British-Iranian entrepreneur Daniel Khazeni-Rad and built with local contributors, and it remains one of the very few English-language publications produced inside Iran for foreign residents, visitors and the Iranian diaspora.

Origins as a guide for foreign residents

Living in Tehran was founded in late 2017. Iran's Financial Tribune, reporting on the project as it launched, described it as the brainchild of Daniel Khazeni-Rad, a British-Iranian entrepreneur who had been based in the Iranian capital for several years, developed in collaboration with local contributors who provided tips. The idea was practical before it was journalistic: an English-language information portal about the city that would clear up foreigners' possible confusion about everyday matters and offer insight into what to do in Tehran.

Khazeni-Rad defined the audience plainly in that early reporting: LiT's main target was resident foreigners in the city, as well as Iranians who speak and read English. The Financial Tribune noted that Tehran then hosted some 300,000 foreign residents, a population of diplomats, businesspeople, students, journalists and the spouses and families of mixed households, all of whom faced a city whose working systems were documented almost entirely in Persian. Living in Tehran set out to document those systems in English.

From annual magazine to online platform

The publication's own history records that it began as a local guide to daily life in Tehran and was initially produced as an annual magazine in 2017. It subsequently became an online-only publication in English, and its self-description evolved accordingly: from a city guide into a broader media project documenting cultural shifts, lived experiences and human stories from Iran, both inside the country and across the global Iranian diaspora.

That evolution is visible in the site's present structure. Living in Tehran organises its output under headings that mix the practical and the cultural: News, Living, How To guides, Doing Business, Travel Guide, City Guide and Places to See, alongside Customs and Holidays, Top Attractions and City Tours. It also maintains a newsletter and short video features under the title Tehran Today. The magazine format survives in this architecture: themed sections, service journalism and features, published continuously online rather than in a yearly print edition.

The practical brief: money, housing and daily systems

The service core of Living in Tehran was present from the first reporting on it. The Financial Tribune's account of the launch listed guides to money matters and the weather, restaurants and leisure facilities, and explained one of the classic confusions the site set out to solve: the Iranian currency, whose official unit printed on notes and coins is the rial, while everyday transactions use the unofficial toman, formed by dropping a zero. The portal offered a complete guide to Iranian cheques and banking issues, helping visitors manage foreign exchange and finances.

That practical brief continues in the publication's recent output. Its How To and Living sections carry explainers such as the schedule for Tehran's summer power outages, guidance on staying cool in extreme summer heat, guides to the Bus Rapid Transit system, surveys of the top social media used in Iran and assessments of the cost of living in Tehran. Its Doing Business section tracks subjects such as Tehran housing prices per square metre and the prices of domestic and imported cars, the kind of figures a resident foreigner, a returning member of the diaspora or a prospective employer needs and cannot easily extract from Persian-language sources.

Culture, leisure and the city

Alongside its service journalism, Living in Tehran was from the start a cultural guide. Early coverage introduced the city's historical monuments, museums, parks and religious places, and recommended artistic and cultural events across the city, including gallery events, concerts, theatre performances and films. For visitors, it suggested where to try the best quality Iranian dishes, and for shoppers it carried information about Tehran's top malls. For families planning to reside in the city, it introduced business opportunities together with real estate agencies and international schools in the metropolis.

The cultural strand remains prominent in the online magazine. Its City Guide and Places to See sections profile destinations such as Darakeh, the mountain foothill district at the city's northern edge, and the National Car Museum of Iran, while its features document phenomena such as the Golden Palm sculpture in Mellat Park. Seasonal and festival coverage explains Yalda Night, the Persian winter solstice celebration, and Christmas in Iran, where ancient Christian communities celebrate on dates that include both 25 December and 6 January. The editorial logic is consistent: to make the lived culture of the capital legible to readers who do not read Persian.

News and explanation for an international audience

In its current form Living in Tehran describes its work as centring on context rather than headlines. It explores how art, daily life, social norms and individual experiences reflect deeper changes in Iranian society, aiming to make those realities more accessible to readers unfamiliar with the country. Its stated audience has widened from the capital's foreign residents to non-Persian-speaking readers generally, members of the Iranian diaspora, and anyone interested in understanding Iran beyond political narratives.

The News output reflects that explainer brief. Recent coverage has included country-by-country compilations of travel advisories for Iran, explainers marking forty days since major unrest, reporting on changes to vehicle import rules for Iranians living abroad, proposals affecting expatriates' military service obligations, the resumption of international flights to Tehran, and fixtures for international football converted into Iran Standard Time. Travel guidance remains interwoven with the news: comprehensive guides to Iranian visa types, student visas and the offices that issue them sit alongside reporting on the rules as they change.

Independence and positioning

Living in Tehran describes itself as independent and non-partisan, with a focus on explanation, documentation and cultural insight. It also presents itself as the first independent English-language media covering stories about different aspects of life in Iran. That positioning distinguishes it from the two better-known categories of English-language media about the country: the state-affiliated Iranian outlets that publish in English for external audiences, and the foreign media and diaspora outlets that report on Iran from outside. LiT's claim on readers rests on being produced in Tehran itself, by a team working in the city, while addressing an audience that is largely outside it.

The founding model reinforced that position. The magazine was not launched by a media group but by an entrepreneur working with local contributors, and its early identity was that of a residents' guide rather than a news organisation. Its subsequent broadening into cultural documentation and explanatory news kept the same voice: that of a local explainer translating the realities of Iranian life, linguistic and otherwise, for readers approaching the country from elsewhere.

Tehran as subject

The magazine's enduring subject is the capital itself. Tehran is Iran's political, economic and cultural centre, a metropolis whose scale, traffic, housing market, climate and bureaucracy generate exactly the everyday questions LiT exists to answer. Its coverage moves between the monumental and the mundane: summer power cuts and car price lists one day, solstice traditions and park sculpture the next. Travel features extend the same treatment beyond the city, with day-trip guides to destinations such as Filband, the village above the clouds in the northern mountains.

This breadth is a deliberate editorial statement about how a country should be covered. By treating cost of living, public transport, holidays and housing as seriously as headline events, Living in Tehran argues implicitly that Iran is best understood through the texture of ordinary life. Its own summary of its work makes the point explicit: explanation, documentation and cultural insight, for readers who want to understand Iran beyond political narratives.

Place in Iran's English-language media

English-language publishing from inside Iran is a small field, and an independent magazine within it is smaller still. Living in Tehran occupies that space with a distinctive history: launched in late 2017 as an annual magazine and residents' guide founded by Daniel Khazeni-Rad with local contributors, covered at launch by the Financial Tribune as a portal for the capital's foreign community, and developed into an online-only English-language platform whose sections span news, business, travel, city life and culture.

Its record, as documented by its own pages and by the reporting that greeted its launch, is that of a service magazine that grew into an explainer. For foreign residents it remains a practical handbook to money, banking, housing, visas and transport. For the diaspora and for international readers it functions as a window onto daily life in Tehran and Iran, written in English from inside the city it describes.