This is often the case.

Consider too the selection bias in those you've met from Iran, presumably outside that country. Both on ideological and socioeconomic / aptitude bases.

I'd first encountered a similar observation in the 1970s or 1980s, then directed largely at those from Soviet Bloc countries encountered in the West. Typically these were academics, engineers, or similarly highly-skilled professionals, who presumably found greener pastures outside their homeland. Presuming that these were necessarily representative of the larger population ignores sampling dynamics.

It's genuinely hard to parse reality from propaganda when it comes to Iran. There are plenty of travel vloggers on youtube who visited over the past few years (before the June war obviously).

The state of the country seemed quite beautiful to be honest. I have a hard time thinking it's a total disaster right now

Yes! Iran baffles me. Iran has a tremendous intellectual tradition. It has quite advanced technology. And Iranians are quite orderly. Tehren is clean, well organized, etc. They even have relatively functioning democratic systems at some levels of government. Candidates are screened for conformity with theocratic dictates, but at the local government level--where the focus is on roads and bridges and stuff like that--there is functioning multi-party democracy. In Tehran, the city council is directly elected, and then appoints the mayor of Tehran. In the early 2000s, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then mayor of Tehren, made a list of the world's 10 best mayors, alongside Atlanta's Shirley Franklin.

Greed is emotion-based. Intelligence isn't necessarily the best counter against emotion.

Iran used to be a very prosperous country only a century ago, and then it democratically elected a totalitarian theocratic party.

Don't think that it can't happen here too.

This can apply to almost every country on earth.