As Iran is currently during winter, the country has once again been ravaged by seasonal floods. Heavy rain, which began on Saturday, and the ensuing floods caused great damage to 87 cities, as well as hundreds of villages across 17 of Iran’s provinces. However, the Iranian government is yet to respond to this latest crisis.

Many Iranians, especially those living in rural areas, who have no shelter and protection against floods have been affected greatly. Reports indicate that by Tuesday, 11 people had lost their lives and many others have been injured or are missing. In the area of Konarak, over 10,000 people are homeless and with rising water levels, have been left stranded.

The tragedy of Iran is that every year, the country is hit by both drought and floods. And this is happening recurrently. This time around, as floods ravaged parts of the country, in other regions people were suffering from water shortages.

Most of Iran’s provinces are currently facing water shortages and have been for months, with six provinces in a critical situation. Officials within the Iranian regime have consistently blamed natural events and lack of rainfall for the water shortages, instead of responding to the protests in recent months. However, with the recurrence of flash floods annually for the past few years, there is no lack of rainfall in Iran.

The main issue is the regime’s lack of forwarding planning and their decades of mismanagement and destructive policies. The regime and their affiliated organizations have been on a rampage of destruction when it comes to Iran’s natural resources, and as a result, the damage to the ecosystem has worsened the country’s natural disasters.

The state-run Mardom Salari publication wrote on January 4 that, “In the past few years, the environmental situation is very contradictory… this situation is the result of negligence and mismanagement in different periods.”

According to different studies, every acre of forest can preserve 2,000 cubic meters of water. Due to deforestation, mainly done by companies and organizations linked to the Revolutionary Guards, rainfall quickly turns into a flood.

Since 2019, the national weather organization has been predicting floods in Iran, and as a precaution, they have consistently warned the regime. However, the regime has failed to put any preventative measures in place to reduce the damage.

They have no crisis management plan, and for those citizens worst affected by the floods, the regime is unwilling to help those stranded and shelter them. The regime would rather use money from the government’s budget to support the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and their malign activities, instead of providing aid to the Iranian people.

Back in 2013, the share of the annual budget allocation for construction and crisis response departments was 30 percent, this year the share has fallen to 11 percent. The Sharq newspaper recently stated that even this minuscule budget has not been wholly fulfilled, with 60 to 80 percent of it not being used for its intended purposes.

At the same time, the people of Iran are becoming more aware of the regime’s role in environmental disasters and that Iran’s environmental crises will only go away when the mullahs’ regime is replaced with a democratic government that has given priority to the people and country’s interests.

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