Remembering Syria: Iran Struggles With Potentially Explosive Environmental Crisis
NOVANEWS
JAMES DORSEY
An Iranian woman and her daughter walk past an abandoned boat at the Hamoon wetland in Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan Baluchistan, bordering Afghanistan, Feb. 2, 2015. (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
By James M. Dorsey
Iranian leaders are struggling, months after anti-government protests swept the Islamic Republic in late December and January, to ensure that environmental issues that helped spark a popular uprising in Syria in 2011 leading to a brutal civil war don’t threaten the clergy’s grip on power.
Like Syria, Iran has been confronting a drought that has affected much of the country for more than a decade, with precipitation dropping to its lowest level in half a century. Environmental concerns have figured prominently in protests in recent years...