Exclusive – Ahwaz Floods: Environment Catastrophe and Demographic Engineering

An aerial view of flooding in Khuzestan province, Iran, April 5, 2019. (Reuters)
An aerial view of flooding in Khuzestan province, Iran, April 5, 2019. (Reuters)
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Exclusive – Ahwaz Floods: Environment Catastrophe and Demographic Engineering

An aerial view of flooding in Khuzestan province, Iran, April 5, 2019. (Reuters)
An aerial view of flooding in Khuzestan province, Iran, April 5, 2019. (Reuters)

The floods in Iran, which have raged for more than 30 days, have imposed a stifling “siege” on Arab cities in the southwestern regions of the country, forcing some 500,000 people to leave their homes.

The floods, which have headed south, have left devastation in their wake in the Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Lorestan and Ilam provinces. Interior Ministry figures showed that 24 out of 31 provinces have been affected by the flooding.

“The recent floods are unprecedented... 25 provinces and more than 4,400 villages have been affected,” Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli was quoted as saying in parliament by state news agency IRNA on Sunday.

Fazli said the floods had caused around 350 trillion rials ($2.5 billion) worth of damage.

The European Commission said that 11 million Iranians have been affected and Iranian authorities revealed that 76 people were killed. State television said that the rainfall in the country was unprecedented in 300 years.

Political aspect
A week after the western provinces were struck by floods, President Hassan Rouhani headed to the Ahwaz area to inspect the damage. National Security chief Ali Shamkhani had previously warned that Ahwaz was vulnerable to a “humanitarian catastrophe”, speaking of challenges due to the flooding. The governor of Ahwaz, Gholamreza Shariati, denied these claims.

On Friday, head of the Khomeini Relief Foundation, Parviz Fattah, underscored the severity of the situation in the Arab regions, saying that “this could have been avoided and that the dams authority was mistaken in its estimates.”

Water management
Climate experts, meanwhile, dismissed the government’s assertion that the flooding has helped ease the effects of drought in Iran. They instead said that the flooding was a consequence of climate change, warning that more severe floods should be expected in the future. Meteorological Organization chief, Sahar Tajbakhsh, said that 60 to 65 percent Iranian territories were still suffering from drought. The government has ignored these claims, instead insisting that the drought was over.

Moreover, the floods and heavy rain have exposed the harm dam projects have had on the country’s rivers. The projects have also negatively affected the Hawizeh Marshes, which straddles the Iraq border.

The Ministries of Roads and Urban Development and Energy and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) agricultural arm, the Khatam-al Anbiya Construction Headquarters, have all collaborated in setting up dam projects in Iran. Since 1979, ten major dams have been built on the Karun and Karkheh Rivers. Dozens of smaller ones have been constructed to divert river routes and control water levels.

Arab residents of the southwestern region have expressed concern over the authorities’ plans to set up two other dams that could divert waters from Ahwaz to central Iran.

Oil facilities
The flooding has exposed the Energy Ministry’s plan to divide the Hawizeh Marshes into several basins to drain the marshes on the Iranian side of the border as part of its efforts to develop the Azadegan oilfield. Activists have launched campaigns in Persian and Arabic against these ambitions. The IRGC and Energy Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh have denied the plans and sought to contain local anger.

Arab displacement
The floods have also heightened concerns over the forced displacement of Arabs in the Ahwaz region. In 2005, hundreds of thousands of Arabs marched in protest against then President Mohammad Khatami’s plans to displace them to other regions and encourage non-Arabs to take up residence in their place.

The area has for years suffered from government negligence, most notably after the end of the Iraqi-Iranian war, where it has yet to recover from the impact of the conflict. The authorities have only sought to reconstruct oil facilities and neglected to revive and improve services.

In addition, since the 1990s, successive governments have sought to implement several major projects aimed at reducing agricultural land owned by Arabs and consequently force them to quit the area.

This year’s floods have revived concerns over displacement when the authorities ordered the evacuation of 12 cities and towns. Official sources said that only some ten percent of the locals heeded this call. Some social media users have also posted recordings of Ahwaz locals, who claimed that authorities deliberately caused the floods in order to displace the population.



‘Bad Day:’ Trump Reflects on Assassination Bid One Year Later

Republican candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024. (AFP)
Republican candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024. (AFP)
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‘Bad Day:’ Trump Reflects on Assassination Bid One Year Later

Republican candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024. (AFP)
Republican candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024. (AFP)

US President Donald Trump says "mistakes were made" but he's satisfied with the investigation into his near-assassination a year ago, as the Secret Service announced disciplinary actions Thursday against six staff members.

In excerpts of an interview on Fox News' "My View with Lara Trump" show, airing Saturday, Trump, 79, said the elite close-protection service "had a bad day."

"There were mistakes made. And that shouldn't have happened," Trump said in the interview conducted by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who has her own show on the Trump-friendly news channel.

The Republican -- whose ear was nicked by a bullet while he addressed an election rally in Butler, Pennsylvania -- noted that the would-be assassin had access to a "prime building" overlooking the rally.

One bystander was killed and two other people in addition to Trump were wounded before a counter-sniper killed the gunman -- 20-year-old Thomas Crooks.

The sniper "was able to get him from a long distance with one shot. If he didn't do that, you would have had an even worse situation," Trump said. "His name is David and he did a fantastic job."

Speaking of the post-incident investigation and "the larger plot," Trump said "I'm satisfied with it."

"It was unforgettable," he said, recalling the drama. "I didn't know exactly what was going on. I got whacked. There's no question about that. And fortunately, I got down quickly. People were screaming."

The Secret Service said in a statement that the July 13, 2024, attack was "nothing short of a tragedy" and "an operational failure that the Secret Service will carry as a reminder of the critical importance of its zero-fail mission."

The agency cited communication, technical and human errors and said reforms were underway, including on coordination between different law enforcement bodies and establishment of a division dedicated to aerial surveillance.

Six unidentified staff have been disciplined, the Secret Service said. The punishments range from 10 to 42 days suspension without pay and all six were put into restricted or non-operational positions.

Among measures beefing up security, is an expansion of the fleet of armored golf carts to carry the president. Trump spends frequent weekends at his golf courses and in September last year was allegedly the target of a failed assassination plot while playing in Florida.

"The agency has taken many steps to ensure such an event can never be repeated in the future," Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in a statement.