{"id":10959,"date":"2018-07-09T15:27:08","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T19:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=10959"},"modified":"2018-07-09T15:49:50","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T19:49:50","slug":"water-shortage-a-silent-earthquake-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/10959\/","title":{"rendered":"Water Shortage, A “Silent Earthquake” In Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

The real cause of Iran\u2019s water problems is the incompetent regime’s policies. Indeed, water shortage in Iran is acting like a silent earthquake towards regime change erupting in the form of people’s protests in various cities across the country and shaking the foundation of the regime.<\/em><\/p>\n

The role of Iran’s water crisis in the recent protests<\/b><\/p>\n

Earlier this month, protests erupted in Khorramshahr and other cities of Khuzestan province over lack of access to drinking water. The protests soon turned into anti-government\u00a0demonstrations<\/a>, marked by slogans against the regime\u2019s president, supreme leader, and the entirety of the mullahs\u2019 theocracy.<\/p>\n

Protests\u00a0<\/a>over water are not new, although the new wave of nationwide uprisings that have started since the beginning of the year have given them new fuel. Iran\u2019s water problem has lasted for more than a decade and can be seen in different provinces of Iran, including in Isfahan, where farmers are protesting over the poor irrigation facilities, in Azerbaijan, where the country\u2019s largest lake is drying, in Kermanshah, Kurdistan and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian regime\u2019s president, recently acknowledged that Iran\u2019s water scarcity problem has become a national security issue. But unsurprisingly, his regime\u2019s response to protests over the shortage of water has been to violently crack down on demonstrators and to make up absurd excuses to blame the country\u2019s environmental problems on other countries in the region.<\/p>\n

\"Water<\/p>\n

The water crisis in Khuzestan province<\/b><\/p>\n

But how is it that Iran, a country that is rich with natural resources, is suffering from water problems?<\/p>\n

According to the regime\u2019s own media, between September and December 2017, Iran saw its driest period in over 67 years, and 40 percent of the country is undergoing a serious drought. Those figures were reported by the National Drought and Monitoring Center. Iran is also facing a deforestation, desertification, and severe water and air pollution. A stark example is that of Khuzestan, which is faced with periodic waves of dust storms, which are taking their toll on the province\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

People in the city of Borazjan in southern Iran shout “we don’t have water”<\/b><\/p>\n

Residents of Borazjan, the capital city of Dashtestan County in Iran\u2019s southern province of Bushehr,\u00a0took to the streets<\/a>\u00a0on July 7, 2018 to protest against lack of water, particularly drinking water, in the province. The protesters gathered in the city\u2019s Hospital Square and chanted slogans such as \u201cDeath to the Dictator\u201d and \u201cWe don\u2019t want an incompetent government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The role of Iran’s water crisis in the recent protests<\/b><\/p>\n

One of the main reasons behind Iran\u2019s water and environmental problems is the excessive creation of dams by the incompetent organs such as the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). This is a practice that was intensified during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad\u2019s presidency and continues to this day. The creation and administration of dams has become a lucrative business for the IRGC and has disrupted Iran\u2019s ecological balance and has triggered and aggravated the drought in Urmia, Isfahan and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The IRGC\u2019s destructive activities in paralleled by severe budget cuts on the country\u2019s environmental institutions, which has been the norm since the 1979 revolution. Rouhani\u2019s own deputy environment minister, Kaveh Madani, recently fled the country because he was being accused of colluding with foreign powers.<\/p>\n

The regime has also shown hostility toward environmentalists. Following the nationwide uprisings that started at the end of December 2017, the regime arrested dozens of environmentalists, again accusing them of cooperating with hostile foreign states. One of them, Kavous Seyed-Emami, died under mysterious conditions in the regime\u2019s prison and the regime\u2019s authorities claimed that he had committed suicide. But given the regime\u2019s record of killing prisoners and declaring their deaths as suicide,\u00a0 the validity of that claim is highly questionable. Following the widespread arrest of protesters at the beginning of the year, the regime has murdered several prisoners in custody in the same manner.<\/p>\n

After fleeing the country, Madani tweeted, “Yes, the accused fled from a country where virtual bullies push against science, knowledge, and expertise and resort to conspiracy theories to find a scapegoat for all the problems because they know well that finding an enemy, spy or someone to blame is much easier than accepting responsibility and complicity in a problem.”<\/p>\n

(Source: PMOI\/MEK<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>Analysis)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The real cause of Iran\u2019s water problems is the incompetent regime’s policies. Indeed, water shortage in Iran is acting like a silent earthquake towards regime […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":10960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[454,476,5,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-analysis","category-articles","category-news","category-society-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10959"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10965,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959\/revisions\/10965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}