Iranian regime’s crisis in the aftermath of the flashfloods in Ahvaz

Moslem Mohamed Heneidi

The Iranian regime suffers a number of problems as a result of its interference in the affairs of neighboring states. This comes at a time Iran marks the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

The same problems uncover the failure of the Iranian regime to solve Iran’s internal problems at all levels.

Apart from its deplorable foreign policy, the Iranian regime has a problem in its relations with Ahvaz region. This problem comes to compound other internal problems the regime is facing.

The Iranian government had recently failed in handling the flashfloods that caused massive destruction in Ahvaz region.

Over the past three decades, Iran followed a systematic policy of effecting demographic change in this resource-rich region, which has an Arab majority and is located in the western part of Iran.

The policy was first unveiled in 2005 when a document in this regard was leaked from the office of an advisor of then-president Mohammad Khatami.

The document revealed the intentions of Iranian authorities to move more than two thirds of the residents of Ahvaz from the region into Farsi areas and substituting them with Farsi residents.

Thus, the Arab people of Ahvaz, especially those living in the countryside, lived during the past three decades between consecutive waves and attacks of policies of targeting, marginalization, exclusion, drought and flooding.

The last of these waves was the severe drought experienced by the inhabitants of the region in the second half of 2018, which reached its peak in November of the same year.

By the beginning of 2019 and the beginning of the flooding season, the local authorities deliberately diverted all the excess water in the country to this region until it turned into a distressed lake, as a deliberate step to expedite the forced displacement of the population according to plan.

Despite the flood disaster in the areas of “Ahvaz” now, revolutionary and local authorities for opening the winds to drain water towards the surrounding marshes and valleys, far away from the areas of Ahvaz, which became lakes devastated and flooded with water to meters.

Facts and plans

Arab presence in Ahvaz, which is located on the eastern bank of the Arabian Gulf, near Saudi Arabia and the UAE, is rooted in history and geography. It was settled by the Arabs in the state of Hammurabi in 1750 BC. It was followed by the rule of Basra under the rule of the Islamic caliphate (1436-1724), and was recognized by the Safavid state and the Ottoman caliphate as an independent state at the time. It was then followed by the emergence of the state of the people (1724-1925), which maintained its independence until it fell to the Iranian Shah “Pahlavi.”

While, the British feared the power of the Arab “Arab” state, which used to live in the Arab region of Ahvaz or Arabistan during its occupation of different parts of the Middle East in the last century, it agreed with Iran to exclude the prince of “Arabistan” Iran in 1925, and since that moment Iran is called the Persian territory.

Thus, Ahvaz is an Arab country that has been swallowed up by Iran since that date, called Khuzestan, in an attempt to obliterate its Arab identity, after it was called “Arabistan” in Persian, and then becoming Ahvaz instead of Al Ahwaz.

Arab Ahvaz is rich in wealth, especially oil, with 85% of the oil extracted and sold by Iran coming from it. This may explain the continued ambitions of the Iranian regime and the desire to liquidate its indigenous people so far.

Over the years, Iranian authorities dealt with the crisis in the Arab occupied from a security angle. The authorities always carry out daily executions. The Ahvazis hang on the hoists and the mechanical cranes to increase the terror and oppression without the slightest degree of prosecution and fair trial, using charges of treason. The international community is, meanwhile, totally silent and refuses to intervene to save an occupied people that has is punished for being Arab and Sunni. Over the past three decades, successive Iranian governments, along with policies of exclusion and political and economic marginalization of the region’s population, have created a series of dams on estuaries that originate from the heights of the Zagros Mountains towards the Ahvazi plains, which historically formed the main reaches of the region’s rivers, Karun, Karkha, Daz, Al-Jarahi, Zahra and other tributaries in order to transfer the water of these small rivers to other Persian regions, such as Isfahan, Yazd, Kerman, Qom and other Iranian cities with a Persian majority.Iran is classified as one of the three countries that have already consumed 40% of its groundwater, as well as a high birth rate and unequal demographic distribution within cities. Figures from the Iranian Energy Agency indicate exhaustion of groundwater resources in governorates, such as Faris, Khorasan and Isfahan. The Iranian government is seeking to build a giant dam in the north of the Ahvaz called “Bakhtiari” at 315 meters (which will be considered the largest dam in the world, according to the Iranian Energy Ministry. The dam will have a storage capacity of 4.8 million cubic meters of water. Iran will construct it in cooperation with China’s Sino Hydro. It is surprising that Arab and world public opinion does not know that these dams were called Persia by the Arab Kesh dams, which are the deadly dams of the Arabs (Ahvazis and Iraqis).As these dams were built for political purposes, the Ahvazi rivers experienced successive waves of falling water levels, some of which were dry and some still barely water. The higher the water level behind these dams, the more open it was. The Iranian regime is now making and exploiting the flood crisis to speed up the implementation of the scheme of displacing the indigenous Arab population from these areas, in light of what the government of President Rouhani has been under pressure and criticism of its anti-Arab movements inside the Ahvazi or neighboring countries, where the authorities failed to make efforts to prevent the aggravation of the flood crisis, and then failed to make the relief efforts required to help and lift the affected. The authorities recently announced the provision of facilities for those who migrate to the Persian provinces in the east and south of the country, thus completing the plan to replace the population structure in the least rich Arab stocks of the country’s top oil and gas.Results and consequencesThe flood disaster that has swept through the region since the beginning of March 2019 has plunged nine cities and 200 villages, displaced half a million Arab citizens and threatened the lives of nearly one million. The crisis has been exacerbated by the Revolutionary Guard’s failure to divert excess water to the central marshes.  In this atmosphere Ahvazis suffer from the effects of a wave of torrents that swept through a large number of areas, in the light of heavy rains, while the Iranian regime dealt with the situation with great negligence. The floods have affected many cities in the region, such as the city Alsos and Tester, al-Huweiza, Busayteen, Khafajia, and some neighborhoods in Al-Ahvaz, the capital. The city of al-Rafi’i, which is located near the Iraqi border, was declared a disaster city after the floods swept through the city and displaced more than 1,000 families. The number of villages abandoned by the population reached 36 villages, of which 11 were in al-Sous, 6 in Tester, 12 in Maysan and 6 villages in the city of Quneitra as well as the city of al-Rafi.The floods have intensified since the beginning of April 2019 in most areas of the north and west of the region in an unprecedented manner, where these rains have been displaced during the past two weeks tens of thousands of citizens and families leaving behind everything they own, and washed away dozens of people to death.The water also destroyed more than thirty-three thousand hectares of agricultural land, and left damage and losses estimated at tens of billions of Iranian riyals as confirmed by the Electricity Department in Ahvaz.RecklessnessThe victims of the floods are now complaining about the lack of interest by the Iranian regime in their situation and their fate. Iranian officials have only given them promises that citizens no longer believe because they already know that they are false. Despite predetermined weather forecasts, the Iranian regime has not taken any precautionary measures that would reduce the human and material damage anticipated as a result of these floods.