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On World Environment Day: Fire Continues to Rage Across Iranian Forests Due to Regime’s Inaction

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Reports and footages from Iran indicate that hundreds of acres of forests in several Iranian provinces have been burning in fire for nearly two weeks.

Yet, the regime has not taken any action to control it.  As World Environment Day comes and goesthe mullahs’ regime has not taken any serious action addressing this crisis.  

The fire started on May 28 in the Khaeiz area located in Iran’s Kohgiluyeh & Boyer Ahmed provinceReports and footages indicate a large fire is raging in Chitgar forest, near Tehran.  

The Khaeiz protected area is a mountainous region with different plant and animal species, which is located between Behbahan and Dehdasht, and the spread of fire can cause irreparable damage to various plant and animal species in this region. On Sunday, smoke from the fires covered areas of the Ahvaz-Shush road in southwest Iran 

As the fire continues to rage, the local authorities speak of lack of firefighting equipment. The regime has neglected financing and investing to prevent and control natural disasters. Instead, the mullahs’ regime has been plundering the national wealth to fund domestic oppression and global export of terrorism.  

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Mohammad Movahedi, a member of the Iranian regime’s parliament  acknowledged on Sunday: “Once again, as seen in the past several years, we are witnessing how forests and natural resources in Kohgiluyeh & Boyer Ahmed province (southwest Iran) have been targeted by fires and irrecoverable damages have been inflicted to our national treasures. Locals with their bare hands are braving all odds to confront the fires that are destroying trees and wildlife, killing innocent animals in the Khaeiz mountains. It is necessary for certain [officials] to wake up and take some action.”  

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), in this regard said: Fire has been burning for two weeks turning hundreds of acres of forests in Behbahan and Khuzestan into ashes, threatening human lives, wildlife, damaging historic landmarks such as Baghmisheh in Tabriz. 

The forests of Zagros, Dashtestan and GachsaranKhaeez forests in KohgiluyehCharmahal-o Bakhtiari and Khuzestan, the farmlands of IlamPaveh, Semnan and some parks in Ahvaz and Tehran are burning in fire. But the mullahs’ anti-Iranian regime takes no action, blaming people instead,” she continued. “The clerical regime, however, has taken no serious action to curb and put off the fire, leaving local residents defenseless in the face of the disaster. 

For over 40 years, the mullahs’ regime has been neglecting Iran’s rich environment and wildlife and has even arrested and imprisoned environmentalists. One of the regime’s crimes was the destruction of a large part of the Iranian forests. This criminal action has resulted in disasters such as floods, water shortage, soil erosion, dust, and desertification, which are getting increasingly catastrophic every dayState-run media and regime insiders have acknowledged that over 45,000 acres of forests have been destroyed in the last 40 years. The regime’s affiliated mafia use the highquality woods and sell them for personal profit or financing the regime’s illicit activities.  

Forests in the mountains of Zagros, across where the fire is spreading, have been largely harvested 

On March 3, 2019, the state-run ISNA news agency quoted Shirzad Najafi, Director General of Natural Resources of Lorestan Province in the west of the country, as saying that the forests of Zagros were not a subject of prohibition of harvesting of woods. He said: “Unfortunately, much of the forests of Zagros have been destroyed during the prohibition of harvesting the forests of the north, and one day this will become critical in the country.” He also reminded: “Every day, 2,000 lumber trucks are shipped to the north of the country by any means.” 

The destruction of forests is not limited to Zagros. The northern parts of Iran with their old forests have been widely affected by the regime’s wrong policies. Masoud Molana, a member of the National Environmental Coordination Council, in an interview with the state-run ISNA news agency on October 24, 2018, said: “According to the statistics of natural resources and forestry, the forests of the north have been reduced from 3,600,000 to 1,800,000 acres over the past 40 years. Once we have destroyed half of the forests, the rain will no longer be a blessing and every precipitation would turn into a flood.” 

The Iranian regime, due to its institutionalized corruption and prioritizing domestic oppression and export of terrorism abroad, has been plundering Iran’s national wealth to fund its illicit activities, and neglected helping people in the face of natural disasters. This approach, which is in line with the mullahs’ handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which due to their cover-up and deception has so far resulted in nearly 50,000 deaths, once again confirms that this regime does not care about Iran and the Iranian people and the only way to manage natural crises and rebuild Iran using its own national wealth is overthrowing the regime.  

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