Smart tourism has emerged as one of the most prominent contemporary approaches to tourism development, playing a pivotal role in enhancing destination competitiveness, improving service quality, and increasing tourist satisfaction. Despite Iran's substantial tourism potential, the development of smart tourism has been constrained by numerous challenges, making the identification of its key driving forces a critical scientific and managerial priority. Accordingly, this study aims to identify and analyze the driving forces of smart tourism development in Iran and to propose an indigenous conceptual model for this field. This study is applied in terms of its purpose and employs a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design. In the qualitative phase, the initial set of indicators was extracted through content analysis of the relevant scientific literature. In the quantitative phase, the proposed model was validated and refined using a three-round Delphi technique involving 34 experts in the field of smart tourism. The participants were selected through purposive and snowball sampling methods, and the reliability of the findings was confirmed using the experts' agreement coefficient. The findings indicate that the driving forces of smart tourism development in Iran can be classified into seven principal dimensions: hardware infrastructure, software infrastructure, financial and economic factors, human resource management, sustainable development and environmental considerations, government policymaking and institutional support, and smart marketing and promotion. Among these dimensions, technological infrastructure and government policy support achieved the highest level of expert consensus. The results suggest that the successful development of smart tourism in Iran requires an integrated approach centered on infrastructure development, human resource capacity building, institutional support, and the effective adoption of emerging technologies. The proposed model offers a comprehensive framework that can serve as a valuable foundation for strategic planning and evidence-based policymaking in Iran's tourism sector.