Environment

RFL/RE – Iran helped the United States topple the Taliban’s brutal regime in Afghanistan in 2001.But more than 20 years later, after U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban regained power, the once sworn enemies have become allies.Differences remain between Afghanistan’s Sunni Taliban rulers and Iran’s Shi’ite clerical regime. Tehran, like the rest of the international community, has yet …

Iranwire – A recently-published report examining decades of water resource management in Iran has made the most convincing argument yet that the political structure in Iran – not global warming, sanctions or the behaviour of Iranian citizens – is what’s stopping the country from resolving the water crisis. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Sustainability, University of Maryland researcher Mehdi Ketabchy’s Investigating the Impacts …

RFL/RE – Only a dozen Asiatic cheetahs are left in the wild in Iran, the deputy environment minister said, describing the situation for the highly endangered species as “extremely critical.” “The measures we have taken to increase protection, reproduction, and the installation of road signs have not been enough to save this species,” Hassan Akbari told the Tasnim news agency …

VOA – At least eight people have been killed in flash flooding in Iran’s south due to heavy rains expected to last until later this week, state media reported on Tuesday. “Following the floods and rains of the past few days in the southern regions of the country, we have seen an increase in casualties and deaths,” spokesman for the …

Al-Monitor- At least 10 people are confirmed dead and several other remain missing in Iran’s south and southeast as severe weather conditions and flash floods slam the impoverished region. Dramatic footage in the past six days has shown a trail of destruction with bridges collapsing and cars washed away by the unprecedented precipitation in Sistan-Baluchistan, Kerman, Fars and Hormozgan provinces.  According to Iran’s Emergency Organization, the massive blow to the already weak infrastructure cut off access …

Iranwire – Fars Heydari, one year and four months old, lived in Goldasht neighborhood of Ahvaz, the capital of Iran’s Khuzestan province. On Friday, December 10, he became the latest victim of the city’s open sewers. That day, he was sitting alongside his parents outside their home. While their attention was diverted, he ran out toward the open sewer and …

Al-Monitor – The director of the state-run Office for Meteorology in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province has painted one of the bleakest pictures ever for the impoverished area’s water shortages. According to Mohsen Heydari, all-time low precipitation over the past months is only complicating the consequences of a decade-long drought in the region. Heydari told Iran’s Tasnim News Agency that over 95% of …

RFL/RE – Iran has worked for decades to bring its sewage system into the modern age. But metal thieves are throwing a wrench in the works.Authorities recently announced that the one of the country’s biggest public-works projects — the nearly 50-year effort to build a massive wastewater-treatment network in the capital — was “70 percent” done.But Masud Reza Sameni, deputy …

CHRI – The Iranian security and military forces’ violent crackdown on large protests in the city of Isfahan that broke out over severe state mismanagement of water resources is more evidence of the Ebrahim Raisi government’s policy of zero tolerance of public criticism and dissent. “People from various sectors of society are protesting the state’s incompetence in resolving fundamental crises that are …

RFL/RE – A U.S.-based news outlet that covers news in Iran says at least 214 people, including 13 minors, were arrested last week in a police crackdown on demonstrators protesting crippling water shortages in the central city of Isfahan.Thirty people were wounded in the eyes by pellets fired by police officers on November 26, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).Severe drought …