New Sinkhole Appears In Tehran As Sign Of Wider Crisis
Iran’s Tehran province is literally sinking with large sinkholes and fissures appearing in the densely populated region as underground water reserves decline.
Iran’s Tehran province is literally sinking with large sinkholes and fissures appearing in the densely populated region as underground water reserves decline.
This time a subsidence has led to the evacuation of about a dozen residential units in one of Tehran’s southern neighborhoods.
Local media reports said on Friday that the new sinkhole in Nasimshahr is two meters deep with a length of over 15 meters.
Officials at Tehran’s municipality have blamed human error, saying that the incident is under investigation and that people can come back to their homes soon, but such incidents are usually due to decreasing ground water levels.
According to the government, 31 cities and towns in Esfahan province, 30 cities in Tehran province, 25 urban centers in Kerman province and 24 cities in Khorasan Razavi province are in imminent threat of subsidence. In some regions the ground has sunk by 30 centimeters or one foot.
Fissures have appeared in the historic city of Esfahan, threatening UNESCO protected landmarks. Residents held large protests in November demanding their traditional share of water for the city’s river. Security forces used force and shotguns to suppress the protests, injuring dozens of people.
Land subsidence is not limited to big cities with big construction projects. In many areas in Iran cracks and huge hollows that resemble meteor craters have appeared in the ground in recent years. Ali Saberi, a geologist told local media that one million hectares of land in the country is affected by subsidence and the main cause is unlimited extraction of ground water.
Land subsidence − which can occur for many reasons including human activities like mining, extracting underground water, petroleum, or gas − is a growing problem in many other places including Mexico City where a growing population of 10 million has resulted in the exhaustion of underground water resources.
Some blame the water situation in Iran on an emphasis in achieving self-sufficiency in agriculture, including water-intensive crops such as rice and other grains, which was the aim of successive Iranian administrations even before the United States imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions in 2018.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in 2000 and 2001, promoted an increase in population and self-sufficiency in wheat and rice as the main agricultural goal.
Repeated droughts in Iran have made water management an urgent issue, but critics say wrong water conservation policies or the lack of any planning have played a major role in the current situation.
In an article published by Fars news agency, an affiliate of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Friday [Dec. 31], Hassan Ravandeh, related stories about the life and “charismatic” character of the slain commander as a tribute on the second anniversary of his killing.
Ravandeh, who was identified by Fars as one of the advisors to IRGC’s Qods (Quds) Force, is said to have accompanied Soleimani during his missions and trips across the region. He has recently published a book about his memoirs of the IRGC’s top man overseas.
He said that Soleimani was very popular among other military men active in the region, adding that he used to bring souvenirs for the families of everybody he was involved with. He singled out an unnamed Russian commander who was stationed in the Syrian port city of Latakia that was especially fond of the Iranian commander.
According to the article, Soleimani bought a necklace for his wife and gold jewelry for his daughters before paying them a visit in Latakia. Surprised by the gifts the Russian asked how he could reciprocate the gesture, and Soleimani, reportedly, demanded that they sell him about 1,000 Krasnopol laser-guided artillery shells.
Ravandeh says that the Russian commander, who he claims is now the head of the aerospace force of the Russian army, gave Soleimani 100 projectiles because they only had 140 available in their arsenal. He added that Russia never asked for any money in return for such a gift, which according to him was worth about $7 million.
Soleimani was killed in a United States drone attack, ordered by former president Donald Trump in January 2020, as he arrived at Baghdad airport from Syria. He was Iran’s top military and intelligence operator in the Middle East, organizing proxy forces.
Soleimani played a major role in the Syrian civil war as the coordinator of Iran’s military involvement, including sending tens of thousands of regular and irregular forces to fight in support of the Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.
In June 2014, Iran’s Tasnim news agency in a report quoted General Mohammad Pakpour IRGC’s ground forces as saying that the Revolutionary Guard’s artillery force has upgraded its capability with deploying Krasnopol guided shells.
It is not clear if Pakpour’s announcement was related to Soleimani’s exchange of gifts with the Russian commander in Syria. Russia was still not officially involved in the Syrian war in 2014, but it most probably had a military mission to assist Assad’s forces. Russia entered the war in full force in September 2015.
It is also possible that Russia had already supplied the artillery shells before Soleimani asked for more in Syria. But whether in 2014 or later, any Russian transfer of Krasnopol shells would have violated a United Nations arms embargo on Iranimplemented in 2007, which expired in October 2020, well after Pakpour’s statement or Soleimani’s death.