Leading Seminarian Says Iranian Clerics Losing Popularity

In a resolution passed Thursday morning at UN headquarters in New York City, the General Assembly described climate change and environmental degradation as some of the most pressing threats to humanity’s future, calling on states to step up efforts to ensure their people have access to a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment.”

Some 161 countries voted for the resolution and only eight countries abstained, including Iran, Russia, and China.

“This resolution sends a message that nobody can take nature, clean air and water, or a stable climate away from us – at least, not without a fight,” said Inger Andersen, the executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP).

The move followed a similar vote by the UN Human Rights Council that declared in April that access to a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment” is a human right.

Earlier in July, sandstorms and dangerously polluted air led to the closure of schools and some government offices in Iran’s capital Tehran as well as several other cities across the country.

Tehran was logged as the most polluted city in the world in April with air quality hazardous and visibility very low largely due to the very high level of airborne particles. The capital’s pollution is mainly blamed on poor government policies, desertification and low water levels, as well as climate change that has intensified sandstorms.

Moreover, the usage of highly polluting diesel and mazut fuels in power plants jumped in Iran in 2021 on top of increases in previous years.

The protesters, mostly followers of influential Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr who seeks to curb the influence of the Islamic Republic in Iraqi politics, gathered at the end of a bridge leading to Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone district – which houses government buildings and foreign embassies and mounted onto concrete barriers. According to Iran International’s correspondent Truska Sadeghi, they are heading for the Iraqi judiciary building.

Brandishing Iraqi flags and portraits of Sadr, the protesters chanted "All the people are with you Sayyed Moqtada," referring to Sadr with his title as a descendant of prophet Muhammad.

Calling for a consensus government and reforms, they demand ending foreign interference, particularly by the Islamic Republic, handing over corrupt officials to the law, and dissolving the parliament and the Coordination Framework, a coalition of Shiite parties close to Tehran.

Stressing the need for an independent government in Baghdad, they emphasize that they do not want an Iranian-linked government or a subordinate one. Protesters say they are not just the followers of Sadr; “we are all of Iraq,” they say.

Friday night, Sadr’s supporters shut down several offices of Iran-backed Hizb-ul-Dawa (The Islamic Dawa Party) and the Iraqi National Committee.

A senior Shiite scholar said on state TV that, “We will not let Iran’s Revolutionary Guard manage our country, we will cut off Iran's hand.”

According to unconfirmed reports, at least one protester is dead and several more are injured during the clashes with security forces.

There are also reports that Iran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi forces, also known as Popular Mobilization Forces, are on high alert.

Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi has also called on protesters to show restraint to protect the safety and lives of the demonstrators.

In a show of strength on Wednesday, July 27, protesting Iraqis forced their way into the parliament, walked on tables, waved Iraqi flags, sat in lawmakers' chairs, and chanted anti-Iran slogans to protest a Tehran-backed prime ministerial nominee. On Monday, July 25, the Coordination Framework nominated Mohammed al-Sudani as the prime minister, a decision opposed by Sadr.

The mass gathering was considered a show of force by the firebrand cleric whose party won the highest number of seats in the October 2021 national elections but withdrew after failing to form a government with Sunni and Kurdish allies in Iraq's hectic power-sharing system free of Iran-backed parties that have dominated many state institutions for years.

It was the largest protest since the federal elections and the second time al-Sadr has used his ability to mobilize the masses to send a message to his political rivals this month,and renewed his call to dismantle outlaw armed factions, referring to the Iran-backed Shiite militia Hashd al-Shaabi, which was led by former Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis before he was killed alongside Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 by a US drone strike.

According to official figures, as of Friday night, early Saturday, 56 people were confirmed killed in the floods, and at least 16 others missing. Nineteen of Iran’s 31 provinces, 38 cities and 106 towns are affected by heavy rains and floods.

Indian sub-continent summer monsoons usually bring some rain showers to Iran’s arid plateau, but every few decades the impact becomes more intense and causes flooding.

This week the storms spread throughout the arid regions. The central Yazd city, with an annual precipitation of just 4 centimeters, received 5 centimeters of rain from Thursday to Friday. There are videos showing centuries-old historic buildings destroyed or severely damaged in the province of Yazd. This perhaps is an indication of the unprecedented impact of the monsoon rains.

The video below shows historic buildings collapsing in Yazd province

Partly due to the arid nature of the land and partly because of neglect in urban planning, even a modestly strong storm leads to deadly floods in Iran. Many dry riverbeds are choked off with construction or debris dumped by residents, leading to sudden flash floods in places no one expected one.

This year some forecasts had said that the Indian monsoon will have above-average intensity, but why the impact has moved so far west of India, is not clear. What some experts say is that warmer temperatures and more dust storms in the Middle East can contribute to the intensification of monsoon conditions over the Indian ocean. Western parts of Pakistan near Iran were hit hard in June and early July with dozens of people dying in floods.

The last time a very strong Indian or South Asia monsoon hit Iran was in 1956, with devastating floods.

Areas in and around Iran’s capital, Tehran experienced flash floods on Thursday and Friday with more than 20 killed and large mud slides covering densely populated urban parts of the 15-million Greater Tehran region. Authorities warn of more rains until Sunday, July 31.

Officials in the northern Caspian Sea region on Friday spoke of three “foreigners” killed in floods and 8 missing, but did not mention their nationalities. The Caspian coast, which has a subtropical climate and forested hills is a popular destination for Iranian tourists and occasionally foreigners.

Before the storms, Iran was experiencing its most arid year, with extremely high temperatures in the south, at times nearing 50 degrees Celsius or more than 120 Fahrenheit, with heavy dust pollution. Deaths were reported from the high temperatures and dust storms.

Precipitation was at least 30 percent less than last year, which itself was a drought period. Water reservoirs behind major dams were down by an average of 70 percent from their top capacity. The destructive monsoon rains will partly alleviate the water shortage, but it is not clear how much of the water will end up behind dams.

During their hour-long phone call he two presidents underscored the importance of strategic relations between Tehran and Beijing but nothing truly new was reported in the readouts of the talk. The Chinese president had a call with US President Joe Biden the day before.

According to the Iranian readout of the call, Raisi reiterated that reviving the 2015 agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) depends on a "political decision" by Washington as it was the US that left the agreement and imposed sanctions on Tehran. There was no mention of the nuclear deal in the Chinese readout of the phone conversation. 

Somehow similar to Xi’s call with Biden, in which the “one China” policy was among the main topics, the issue of Taiwan also came up in his call with the Iranian president. 

"Support for the One China policy is a definite and principled policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Raisi said, criticizing the US interference in the internal affairs of countries. 

Raisi told Xi that Tehran is resolved to expand relations with Beijing in all fields regardless of international developments, especially in providing maritime security and transfer of energy.

The two also talked about the implementation of the 25-year strategic partnership agreement between Tehran and Beijing as well as regional and extra-regional arrangements such as the group of the world’s emerging economies, known as BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. 

The health ministry said Friday that 8,000 new Covid cases were identified in the last 24-hour reporting period and 54 patients died. This brought Iran's total reported cases since the beginning of the pandemic to over 7.3 million and the number of deaths to nearly 142,000. There have been many reports in Iran since the early days of the pandemic that there were far more deaths from Covid than officially recorded.

The new wave of Covid infections in the past few weeks has seriously affected nearly 150 cities and towns which have been labeled as ‘red’ and ‘orange’ Covid zones.

Abbas Shirozhan, spokesman of Iran’s Covid Taskforce, said Friday that holding religious mourning ceremonies during the Islamic months of Muharram and Safar (August 10 to October 8) would be allowed without any restrictions in open spaces while they can also be held indoors if the venue has proper ventilation and social distancing rules are followed.

There were videos of hundreds of men beating their chests to the tune of religious mourning songs in unrestricted religious gatherings in various cities in August 2021 but authorities did nothing to stop the ceremonies. Coupled with a low rate of vaccination, this resulted in a new wave of infections shortly after and daily death figures quickly rose to around 700.

Despite the spread of the Omicron variant in February, the daily death figures hovered around 230 due to more vaccination after August 2021. Since early March the number of infections and deaths has significantly dropped with daily deaths often remaining in single digits.

According to the latest official figures, nearly 65 million Iranians have had at least one dose, 58 million two doses but only 30 million have had a third shot of the vaccine.

In January 2021, the country’s anti-West ruler Ali Khamenei banned American and British-made vaccines when the only ones available at the time were three vaccines made by those countries.

Iranians in social media have repeatedly criticized him for vaccine ban, which increased infections and deaths last summer with the Delta surge. There were also suggestions that authorities played down the threat from Covid back in 2020 so as not to deter voting in parliamentary elections in February of that year.

Following the ban, the government allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to regime insiders for developing homegrown vaccines, a project that largely failed.

Iran's national vaccination plan did not make any significant progress before the presidency was handed over to Khamenei’s preferred candidate, hardliner Ebrahim Raisi in August last year. Raisi has repeatedly boasted about the success of his government in mass vaccination and Covid management.

But critics say centers of power controlled by hardliners impeded former President Hassan Rouhani’s vaccine purchases and once he was gone, they allowed mainly Chinese vaccines already ordered to flow into the country.

Iran’s homegrown Covid vaccine factories have been shutting down for lack of demand as many vaccinated with foreign vaccines refused to get homegrown ones as boosters. The whole scheme of producing domestic vaccines has turned out to be little more than wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and precious time in preventing tens of thousands of deaths in 2021.