Four Million Iranians Risk Displacement If Lake Urmia Dries Up
The former Head of Iran's Environmental Protection Organization has warned that four million Iranians risk displacement if Lake Urmia in northwest Iran dries up.
The former Head of Iran's Environmental Protection Organization has warned that four million Iranians risk displacement if Lake Urmia in northwest Iran dries up.
“Transferring the residents of Tabriz to another place requires 500 billion dollars while the cost of reviving the lake is about one billion dollars,” Isa Kalantari said, explaining that the salt dust would be unbearable for residents in Tabriz and its surrounding cities.
Last year, he had also warned that if the lake is not restored, it will have security consequences, causing a flood of millions of displaced citizens.
Experts say groundwater extraction and using the water of the once bountiful Zarrineh Rud − which feeds Lake Urmia − for irrigating apple trees have both contributed to the lake shrinking by nearly 95 percent in volume over the past 20 years. In 2021 alone, more than 100,000 tons of apples of the province’s production went to waste.
Urmia, which is the largest lake in Iran and the sixth largest salt lake in the world, began shrinking in the mid-1980s and was in danger of disappearing altogether until recovery plans began to be implemented in 2014.
Japan, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) allocated nearly ten billion dollars to save the lake. It is not clear whether or how the earmarked budget was spent.
Former lawmaker Mansour Haghighatpour told Etemad Onlinethat the "audacious Paydari Party" has a lot of money, controls several powerful institutions and has seized and occupied the state television silently.
Haghighatpour is close to Iran’s former conservative parliament (Majles) speaker Ali Larijani who recently had a public run-in with ultraconservatives or hardliners.
Meanwhile, referring to the great number of Paydari members at the Iranian parliament, Haghighatpoor said “had the Guardian Council not disqualified” moderate and reform-minded candidates in the previous parliamentary elections, debates at the Majles would have replaced the nationwide protests that rocked Iran last year.
The Guardian Council, which screens candidates for elections, disqualified hundreds of non-hardliners in the 2020 Majles elections. The Council is under the control of Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei.
He added that Iran's ultraconservatives see themselves as the only revolutionary force in the country and call others spies and seditionists. He further said that the Paydari Party has access to money and media and has spent a lot of money on garnering support on social media.
"They have been given privileged access to funds, political power and media although they are just two busloads of politicians," Haghighatpoor said.
The moderate conservative politician added that when President Ebrahim Raisi took office in 2021, he did not have his own team to form the cabinet. Paydari promised to provide the team from its ranks. However, introduced to Raisi were a bunch of ineffective and unqualified individuals. He said the former Planning and Budget chief and the ministers who have been since removed from their posts show how inefficient Paydari's men are.
Haghioghatpoor predicted that the inefficiency of the Raisi administration and the parliament, both of which are dominated by Paydari, are likely to lead to lacklustre parliamentary elections with a low turnout in March 2024, if the same individuals are the only ones who are allowed to run.
At the same time, some in Iran say that hardliners campaignedincessantly in recent months to have Ali Shamkhani removedas secretary of the national security council. He was replaced by a Revolutionary Guard officer seen as ideologically in sync with Paydari.
Paydari's grip on the state television has also been strengthened during the past years after Payman Jebelli was appointed as the organization's chief. Jebelli chose Vahid Jalili of Paydari as his deputy for television and the latter appointed several party members as the heads of the broadcaster's key channels. This is going to give Paydari the upper hand in the next parliamentary elections in March as there are no private channels in Iran and the state television has exclusive broadcasting rights based on the country's Constitution.
Referring to a letter from Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf to the leaders of Paydari, in which the speaker explained how Paydari members have obstructed the parliament's operations, Haghighatpoor charged that the ultraconservative party has recently increased its activities against Ghalibaf. He said Ghalibaf is likely to have to pay a high price as a result of the tensions created by Paydari members.
Haghighatpoor's statements against Paydari Party came on the same day that the media were speculating on the fate of the election to form the parliament's last presidium in its four-year term of office.
“The regime is taking revenge for the revolutionary movement by executing and killing people,” human rights activist Narges Mohammadi told inmates who gathered Saturday evening at the courtyard of the women’s ward to protest the execution of three political prisoners in Esfahan Friday.
Mohammadi argued that unlike the 1980s when the regime executed thousands of political prisoners to establish and stabilize its tyranny, the recent executions will only strengthen the people’s determination to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Majid Kazemi, Saeed Yaghoubi and Saleh Mirhashemi were handed down the death sentence in a trial condemned as a travesty of justice by human rights campaigners, who say the prisoners were tortured into confessions, and there is no reliable evidence against them.
The three men were convicted over the death of two IRGC’s Basij militia members and a police officer during protests last November in Esfahan. Leaked audio from police radio chatter from the night the three regime agents were killed indicates that they were shot by friendly fire of plainclothes forces. The accused even had alibis for the time the agents were killed, with the family of one of the victims claiming there was CCTV video footage of their son at work.
Friday's executions brought to at least seven the number of protesters hanged since the beginning of the nationwide protests last September, which turned into one of the boldest challenges to the clerical rulers since the 1979 revolution. The protests were ignited by Mahsa Amini's death in the custody of Iran's morality police.
“Execution and taking people’s lives has turned into a despicable everyday practice in the Islamic Republic,” Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of former President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani said at the same gathering. “Execution of three protesters in Esfahan [last week], two in Tehran [in December], executions of 209 in five months, 580 in one year, 14 executions in one day, 22 executions in two weeks…,” she went on to say.
Hashemi accused the regime of using executions to “shut the mouths of critics and dissidents and to escape accountability over the appalling situation in the country” and it also signals the regime’s fear of the people.
She denounced executions “under any pretext, including for impertinence against the prophet, insult against sanctities, taking up arms against the regime, blasphemy, corruption on earth and even for drug trafficking” because, she said, “justice has been taken to the slaughterhouse”.
Hashemi, a former lawmaker who launched Zan daily for women during the presidency of reformist President Mohammad Khatami in late 1990s, is an outspoken critic of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Activists and politicians at home and abroad, as well as family members of protesters killed by the regime have extensively condemned the recent executions. Several neighborhoods in the capital Tehran, Esfahan and in a few other cities were scenes of protests against the regime’s executions last week. Students at universities across Iran also staged demonstrations.
Over 170 activists and politicians in Iran in a joint statement released Sunday dubbed the executions a “systematic murder by the government and demanded the immediate annulment of all death sentences.
A group of political prisoners including reformist politician Mostafa Tajzadeh, also an outspoken critic of Khamenei, said in a separate statement that the regime is using executions “as a tool of suppression and to cover up political, economic and social challenges and crises.”
Friday’s executions also sparked outrage among Western governments and people around the world.