updated 9:09 p.m. ET Sept. 19, 2006

KISH, Iran - Golf never has been very popular in Iran. Even during the days of the shah, there was a single 18-hole course in Tehran: The Imperial Country Club.

And after the 1979 Islamic revolution, golf was derided as a peculiar Western waste of time. The embattled Iranian duffer’s options dwindled as the Tehran course sprouted weeds and had five holes expropriated by the Revolutionary Guards.

But now golf is making inroads in the Islamic Republic. Two new courses are under development on this coral island just off Iran’s Persian Gulf coast, the first in more than 30 years.

A $2.2 billion golf resort, dubbed The Flower of The East, is under development by an Iranian businessman based in Germany, backed by German and Swiss investors.

The investors believe they’ll have little trouble attracting players — and buyers of luxury homes — among the 1.1 million tourists who visit Kish each year. They say the rigors of operating in Iran’s isolation are outweighed by Kish’s attractions: fine white beaches, and no taxes or restrictions on sending home profits.

But construction has been slowed by the nuclear dispute between Iran and the West. If the United Nations imposes sanctions, developers fear the course and surrounding resort could be delayed — or scuttled.

Ingolf Burstedde, the German engineer overseeing the development, says the German government appears to be withholding normal insurance guarantees to German contractors and architects waiting to build the resort.

“Yes, we’re afraid,” Burstedde said in his Kish office. “Sanctions would cause a delay, at least. Maybe we’d stop work for a while.”

Construction was going ahead last week, with Iranian contractors sculpting a huge patch of land under direction of a Dubai-based golf course designer. Furthest along is a nine-hole course and driving range aimed at first-time golfers.

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A tour of the course-to-be last week found backhoes scraping artificial lakes and piling excavated limestone into future bunkers and fairways. The result was a lunar landscape of bleached white hills and dales.

“This is the end of Fairway 4,” said project manager Mahmoud Reza Abbasi, giving a tour in his four-wheel drive vehicle. “This is Island B. This is the start of Lake 12.”

A French firm will handle the final details, since Iranians have no experience designing golf courses, Abbasi said.

A full 18-hole course planned for a neighboring site is aimed at foreign tourists and homebuyers, mainly wealthy Iranian expatriates who live in Los Angeles, Germany and across the Gulf in Dubai, Burstedde said.

By 2009, Burstedde said two finished courses will be surrounded by luxury villas and townhouses marketed, in some cases, for millions of dollars each.

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A second phase, which developers hope to finish by 2012, would contain a luxury hotel, yachting marina and apartments on a manmade peninsula jutting into the harbor.

Burstedde said Iran’s laws mean the resort will lack for two things: integrated bathing and liquor. The Islamic Republic still segregates men and women in the island’s swimming pools and beaches. And alcohol is banned in Iran.

“Can you imagine going to the bar and you can’t get a whiskey?” Burstedde lamented.

In reality, though, men and women do swim together and any taxi driver on the island can find smuggled alcohol. And Burstedde said his resort is preparing for the day those laws are overturned. Spa and swimming pools are designed with easily removable barriers between men’s and women’s sides.

“When the laws change we simply remove the walls and men and women can mingle,” he said.

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