Behind the Headlines/April 3

Jamshid Chalangi:

In tonight’s program once again will look at the flooding disaster across Iran’s major cities as reports say that tens of people have so far perished and many are missing while hundreds of remote villages have been wiped out the map.

This Nowruz of the Iranian people has now turned into a national tragedy instead of celebrating the arrival of the new Persian year.

Tonight we will discuss with our special guest, the environmentalist Dr. Morad Iqbal, how this tragedy could have been averted if the regime had paid the smallest attention to the needs of the Iranian people instead of squandering the nation’s oil revenues by supporting the Assad regime and its own proxies across the Middle East.

Dr. Morad Iqbal:

Our country suffers from water shortage but we have never had any major problem in that respect in the past.

Our people have for centuries used their own underground water resources for their domestic consumption and farming needs. But over the many decades these resources have dried up but no practical alternatives have been put in their place.

Naturally human actions and climate changes also play a role in the depletion and disappearance of these resources.

However, over the last forty years the authorities have done nothing to replenish the loss of these resources and the numerous problems that we now see in many parts of the country have their roots in this factor.

All advanced countries of the world do have a special ministry or department responsible for such disasters, whether floods of earthquakes.

But in Iran we have not had a competent body over the last forty years and whatever actions that the state has taken in this respect have been insufficient and not based on the views or advice of the experts.