Floods have hit 47 cities across eight provinces in Iran after heavy rainfall for the past few days and reports are still coming in about the damage caused.

These floods are nothing new, have killed, injured, made homeless, or otherwise destroyed the lives of many Iranians over the past few years, but regime officials say that the country is suffering from a drought with dam lakes all but drained and water supplies limited.

So how can Iran be experiencing drought and floods? Well, the answer comes down to corruption and greed.

The Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) largely controls Iran’s natural resources and exploits them for profit, which is detrimental to the ecosystem. For example, they’ve previously dug deep wells that destroyed the groundwater aquifers. Currently, they’ve drained 74,000 cubic kilometres of groundwater, according to state-run newspaper Hamshari, which has led to an increase in soil salinity, land subsidence, soil infertility, and soil death. These actions have caused a major drought in a country with thousands of rivers and streams, which is situated between the world’s largest lake and a bay connected to the sea.

Dozens of aqueducts and bridge spans have been damaged and destroyed in flooded areas. The damages in Sistan and Baluchestan province alone reach 40 billion tomans. 39 bridges have been destroyed in Kerman province and 14 bridges in the flooded areas of Khorasan.

Reports indicate that the people in at least 6 cities and 47 villages in the provinces of Isfahan, Yazd, South Khorasan, Khorasan Razavi, Kerman, Semnan, Tehran and Sistan and Baluchestan, have suffered heavy damage.

Whereas the floods are the result of rivers overflowing after seasonal rains, something that happens year after year and that the regime freely admits they have no plan to address. After similar floods in 2020, Kerman’s deputy governor admitted that a failure to dredge the rivers was the problem, but these precautions do not appear to have been taken this year either.

The answer to both flooding and drought in Iran is environmental protection through a detailed policy that is back up with adequate spending; something that Iran has the opportunity and the finances to do. However, the regime refuses because they see natural resources as a money-making opportunity and are fully prepared to exploit natural areas in Iran for a quick buck, even if it increases overall poverty in Iran and results in unnecessary suffering.

The mullahs have even arrested many environmental activists and given them long prison terms for protesting the regime’s destruction of the natural world or even just for trying to study endangered animals in their natural habitat. A recent example came last week when the State Security Force fired tear gas at locals in Lorestan Province who were protesting the decision to cut down walnut trees in Kahman Aleshtar, which provide an income for villagers as well as all the other benefits of trees being left to grow.

In a tweet Mrs. Maryam Rajavi President Elect of the National Counil of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said: “I extend my condolences and sympathies to the victims of the floods last night in Kerman and Yazd, who have lost relatives or property. I call on the people of this region, especially the youth, to rush to the aid of the victims and help find the missing.”

And added: “The clerical regime is the reason for the magnitude of losses and casualties in natural disasters in Iran. By looting and squandering resources in nuclear, missile, and war projects, the mullahs have destroyed the infrastructure and left our people defenseless.