tourism hotspot, complete with a Grand Casino (renamed as the Shayan International Hotel after the Iranian Revolution). Kish Airport was designed to handle the Concorde. After the Islamic Revolution, Kish Island became a duty-free shopping center. In March 2007, the retired FBI agent turned private eye Robert A. Levinson disappeared on Kish Island where he was meeting with an American fugitive known as Dawud Salahuddin. In 2019, the singer Joss Stone was deported from the island by the Iranian customs. Iranian officials claimed the British singer did not have the proper documentation to enter the country, but Joss Stone claimed the Iranian authorities were afraid a woman singer would perform a public show in the country. Geography Kish is located in the Persian Gulf, from mainland Iran, and has an area of approximately with an outer boundary of and a nearly elliptical shape. Along Kish's coast are coral reefs and many other small islands. The island is positioned along the long Iranian coastline north of the Persian Gulf, at the first quarter from the Hormuz entrance to the Persian Gulf. The island is wide from its west coast to its east coast (the distance between Mariam Complex and Hoor field). Its maximum width extending from the southern shorelines to the northern shorelines is (the distance between Gomrok Port and the lighthouse). The island's surface is flat, lacking mountains or even high hills. Kish International Airport is built in the center on an elevated area above sea level. Its highest surface inclination extends from the airport to the shores near Shayan hotel. Climate, nature, and geobotany Kish, like the other Persian Gulf Islands, especially the islands in the Strait of Hormuz, is located on a narrow strip of tropical vegetation in the Northern Hemisphere, with the Persian plateau to the north and the Arabian Peninsula to the south. In addition to its special geographic and climatic attributes, Kish, like other nearby islands, such as Forur, Hendurabi, Shatuar, and Lavan, and even Qeshm, is under the sway of the semi-equatorial climate dominating this band of vegetation. Weather Kish has a very dry semi-equatorial climate. Over an 8-year span, the median annual rainfall in Kish was (54% in winter, 28% in autumn, and 14% in summer) and the median annual temperature was . The relative atmospheric humidity in Kish makes it like a sea island except in cold seasons. The humidity is approximately