Iran’s Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi said more than 170,000 people have gone to emergency wards since the start of December because of heart and respiratory problems caused by air pollution, describing the situation as a “serious and widespread public health crisis.”
“During just one week, emergency departments nationwide recorded over 170,000 pollution-related visits,” Raisi said on Tuesday, noting that cases had risen by 20 to 25 percent compared with normal levels. “Most of these patients came from the 11 provinces with the highest pollution, showing the scale of the crisis,” he added.
Raisi said the Health Ministry estimates the annual health cost of pollution at about $17 billion, and that more than 59,000 people died last year from diseases linked to poor air quality.
Citing World Health Organization data, Raisi said most Iranian cities suffer from dangerously high levels of pollutants. “Tehran had only 14 clean-air days last year, Isfahan 16, Mashhad 28, and Ahvaz just two,” he said. “This means a large part of the population is exposed to hazardous air nearly all year.”
He said particles smaller than 2.5 microns “enter the bloodstream quickly and are proven causes of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and severe respiratory disorders.”
Tehran suffers record air pollution, Shargh reports
The reformist daily Shargh said the current Iranian year, 1404, has been Tehran’s worst for air pollution in at least two decades, with more than half of all days so far classified as polluted. “In no previous year have the data been this dark,” wrote analyst Ali Pirhosseinlou in a Tuesday commentary.
He said the number of “acceptable” air-quality days has dropped to about one-third of the year, while at least four days so far have seen daily air quality index readings above 200 — considered “very unhealthy.”
“The situation is worse than at any time in the past two decades,” Shargh wrote. “There is no plan to control the sources of pollution. No effort to renew diesel fleets, improve fuel quality, or reduce traffic. Instead, the municipality has restricted access to air-quality data.”
The paper concluded: “This is not interpretation – it is reality.”
“Unfortunately, in the past two weeks, I was summoned to these agencies because some fellow Jews posted comments and liked false content, causing misunderstandings among the country's intelligence agencies,” Najafabadi said in an open letter published on his Telegram channel.
Najafabadi called on members of the Jewish community in Iran to refrain from leaving comments or likes on social media that might cause suspicion.
“You are requested, if you have published any unusual, sensitive, or misconstruable comments or likes in cyberspace, to delete them as soon as possible,” the letter said.
‘Unfollow IDF’
“If you are a member of channels and pages of the Zionist regime, including Israel in Persian, and other hostile pages and channels, it is essential to immediately unfollow and cancel membership,” the letter added.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) maintains a series of active accounts and channels on social media platforms such as X, Instagram, Facebook and Telegram in Persian.
“Continuing membership in the mentioned channels or failing to delete comments and likes could lead to judicial problems, and pursuing and resolving the issue in the future will become much more difficult,” it said.
The letter is the latest document in an extensive campaign by Iranian intelligence agencies against the Jewish community, which has intensified after a 12-day war with Israel in June.
Since the recent military confrontation with Israel, dozens of Iranian Jews have been arrested on charges of "collaboration with hostile regimes.”
Kamran Hekmati, a 70-year-old Jewish man from New York, a father and grandfather who runs a jewelry business and holds dual American-Iranian citizenship, is currently detained. Rights groups, colleagues, and friends say he is being questioned over a past trip to Israel.
Hekmati was sentenced to prison in Iran for a trip he made 13 years ago to Israel to hold a ceremony for his son.
According to Israeli media reports, before the 1979 revolution, about 80,000 to 100,000 Jews lived in Iran, but today their number has decreased to fewer than 10,000.
