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Green

Why Environmental Protests In Iran Are Being Ignored

The growing environmental movement in the West, wittingly or not, has given no attention to mass protests in Iran against the clerical regime, most recently focused on the drought conditions and other ecological risks. Had ecologists been hoping to sign a green pact with Tehran?

Local women walk on Gavkhooni wetland in Isfahan province, central Iran

Local women walk on Gavkhooni wetland in Isfahan province

Elahe Boghrat

-Editorial-

I wrote this in late November as farmers in Isfahan, in central Iran, faced a ruthless assault by the security forces of the Islamic Republic on the dried Zayanderud river bed, where they had been protesting for several days. The latest footage shows shots being fired on the crowd of citizens, striking at least one man and a woman.

Farmers had called a protest for 9 a.m. on November 26, and large numbers of people were expected to gather in the river bed where water had until recently flowed for centuries, if not millennia.


The international community, which for decades has failed to question the information fed it by the Islamic Republic and its lobbyists and sympathizers abroad, said nothing about those protests, even as the world's attention was focused on the COP26 summit in Glasgow to discuss the state of the planet.

Indeed, the protests in Iran were about the very same topic, with drought and other environmental destruction in Iran. Countries preferred to listen to the claims of the Islamic Republic's envoys who were also in Glasgow, no doubt hoping for some sanctions relief and a cash handout.

Drought is real

These same people vowing to join a global green alliance are the ones who have destroyed Iran's environment, with or without sanctions, and insist on a satanic nuclear program that has isolated Iran from its neighbors and the world and brought sanctions on its head. And now they declare they would join a global green pact if sanctions were lifted!

Even in the summer of 2020, after the world had watched Iran's sham presidential vote and the election of the man Iranians dub the Death Judge, nothing was said when protests erupted over water in the southern province of Khuzistan. Once more, the media seemed to agree the elections deserved more attention than the protests of ordinary folk.

They looked the other way

But dried rivers will not flow again with promises, threats, repression or an Internet shutdown. Sooner or later, endemic and worsening drought in several parts of Iran was going to reignite protests. But are these protests not part of a global movement to save the environment? Only drought is not some distant threat in Iran. It has already happened.

Yet the defenders of the environment looked the other way. Was it to avoid offending the regime that is fueling this calamity? Are protesting Iranians and their bloody repression less important than Greta Thunberg's now-familiar declarations at summits?

Sometimes, the most harmful and inhumane act of all is neither words nor deeds, but silence.

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Geopolitics

The Nagorno-Karabakh Debacle: Bad News For Putin Or Set Up For A Coup In Armenia?

It's been a whirlwind 24 hours in the Armenian enclave, whose sudden surrender is reshaping the power dynamics in the volatile Caucasus region, leaving lingering questions about the future of a region long under the Russian sphere of influence.

Low-angle shot of three police officers standing in front of the Armenian Government Building in Yerevan on Sept. 19

Police officers stand in front of the Armenian Government Building in Yerevan on Sept. 19

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

It happened quickly, much faster than anyone could have imagined. It took the Azerbaijani army just 24 hours to force the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh to surrender. The fighting, which claimed about 100 lives, ended Wednesday when the leaders of the breakaway region accepted Baku's conditions.

Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.

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Thus ends the self-proclaimed "Republic of Artsakh" — the name that the separatists gave to Nagorno-Karabakh.

How can we explain such a speedy defeat, given that this crisis has been going on for nearly three decades and has already triggered two high-intensity wars, in 1994 and 2020? The answer is simple: the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed themselves into a corner.

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