Young Iranian Cleric Stabbed Several Times In Latest Attack On Clergy
An Iranian cleric named Mojtaba Hosseini has been stabbed several times in his back during his sermon in the city of Karaj in Western Tehran, according to a local official.
An Iranian cleric named Mojtaba Hosseini has been stabbed several times in his back during his sermon in the city of Karaj in Western Tehran, according to a local official.
Morteza Mousavi, the deputy police commander of Alborz province close to the capital, said on Friday that the assault happened Thursday evening. He was taken to the hospital and is now in stable condition.
The attacker was only identified as an Iranian and a self-proclaimed follower of Muhammad al-Mahdi, believed by the Twelver Shiites to be the last of the Imams and the eschatological Mahdi, who will emerge in the end of time to establish peace and justice and redeem Islam.
Several Iranian clerics have come under attack by angry Iranians recently as rising prices and constant protests have led to a tense environment in the country.
Earlier in July, a congregational prayer imam was injured in an assassination attempt by an assailant on a motorcycle in the city of Esfahan.
In early June, the representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader in the central city of Esfahan was attacked by a young man carrying a knife. And in April, a man stabbed three clerics in Iran's largest Shiite shrine in Mashhad, killing two of them.
Earlier in the year, a senior Islamic scholar said that clerics and seminary students are avoiding their usual garb for fear of being insulted in public, as the people in Iran blame the clergy for the current hardships they experience, including high prices and corruption. Another well-known cleric also talked about the growing hatred and grudge towards the clergy in January, warning of a crisis unfolding in society.
According to local media the ground collapsed at 7:40 in Sepah Ave in central Tehran. Chief of Tehran police information center, Ali-Asghar Sharifi, told the media that police and other authorities were working at the scene to secure the area and redirect traffic. The incident had no casualties.
There have long been concerns about earthquakes in Tehran as it sits on tectonic fault lines. Ground subsidence, however, resulting from drought and excessive extraction of water which is likely to become more serious in the future adds a new concern and danger to the densest population center in Iran.
Ground subsidence in urban areas can result in power outages, bursting of gas pipes, deformation of rails, emergence of sinkholes, tilting of buildings, and appearance of cracks and ditches in roads and even loss of human life.
Mohammad Aghamiri, chairman of Tehran City Council’s development committee on Thursday described ground subsidence as a time bomb ticking under the city and criticized the authorities for only watching idly without taking any measures to prevent disaster from happening.
This is not the first instance of ground subsidence in Tehran where smaller fractures and cracks are quickly becoming common in some areas of the city, particularly south and southwest.
According to the latest official data by Iran’s Geological Organization, the rate of subsidence in the plains around Tehran was between 17 and 24 centimeters per year. The deputy chairman of the environment committee of Tehran City Council, Mehdi Babaei, said recently that ground has subsided by as much as 20 centimeters (8 inches) a year near Shahriyar in southern Tehran.
Ali Saberi, a geologist told local media in 2021 that one million hectares of land in the country is affected by subsidence and the main cause is unlimited extraction of ground water.
Intel Lab intelligence and imagery consulting firm in July 2021 said a brief study it had conducted based on a dataset of 14 pairs of satellite images showing various areas of Greater Tehran indicated a maximum average subsidence rate of 4 centimeters/year.
Huge cracks and hollows that resemble meteor craters have appeared in other parts of the country. In urban areas subsidence has caused cracks in walls and in roads.
One of the most affected areas is the historical city of Esfahan in central Iran where the damage to monuments and the international airport have been cause of much concern.There are photos on social media of huge cracks in the ground around the airport, and of hollows in and around Esfahan’s historical buildings.
Iran has been experiencing consecutive droughts for more than a decade in addition to what many lawmakers and journalists have called years of water mismanagement. Illegal deep wells drilled all over the country for irrigation of agricultural land have depleted underground water reserves in many areas.
Alireza Shahidi, head of Iran’s Geological Organization said in March that land subsidence is a “silent earthquake” that can lead to political and security crises.