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How a 50-year-old forest beside the Bisotoun World Heritage site is deliberately run down, logged and primed for real-estate speculation — exposing a deeper crisis of governance. The 112-hectare Bisotoun Forest Park is a planted woodland located in Kermanshah Province in southwestern Iran, lying beside the World Heritage inscription at Bisotoun, an Achaemenid rock relief and cuneiform text carved into the mountainside. The Bisotoun forest park is now in the grip of a multi-layered crisis. According to Shargh newspaper, this 50-year-old woodland, made up largely of Eldar pine, has been exposed to wood-boring pests because of old age and neglect—especially insufficient irrigation by the former concessionaire. Parts of the forest have already dried out. At the same time, illegal logging by profiteers and people with addiction has dramatically deepened the environmental disaster. While natural-resources officials stress the need to cut infected trees and replace them with native species, environmental activists denounce the slow pace of remedial work and voice deep concern that, once management is handed to the municipality, the land will be rezoned and carved up. The scene is one of collision: managerial negligence, ecological crisis, and predatory interests. The Bisotoun forest park, with its fifty-year history and roughly 112 hectares of land, is not only a valuable ecosystem of some 170,000 trees; it is also an inseparable part of the cultural landscape of the Bisotoun World Heritage site. This artificial forest, grown in the shadow of the Achaemenid bas-relief, plays vital roles in moderating the microclimate, preserving soil, providing habitat for wildlife, and completing visitors’ visual experience of this human heritage. Yet this natural and cultural asset now stands on the brink of destruction. A lethal combination of tree senescence, pest infestation, mismanagement, inadequate irrigation, and illegal logging has already dried and destroyed up to 15 percent of its green mass. This is not only an environmental catastrophe; it is a direct threat to the integrity of the landscape around a UNESCO-listed site. Its survival depends on urgent action: rehabilitation and replacement with native, resilient species. Negligence, lawsuits, and the handover to the municipality Environmental activists in Bisotoun county told Shargh: “If the trees in this beautiful and valuable forest are infested, why is no serious pest control being done? It seems the Natural Resources Department has abandoned the place. Some profiteers are deliberately cutting trees in parts of the forest as if they want a full clear-cut. In some cases the bark has been stripped off. Altogether, maybe 300 to 500 trees have been cut or damaged so far.” Abdol-Ali Jalilian, head of forestry and afforestation at the provincial Natural Resources Department, says: “Based on satellite-image assessments, there are 170,000 trees in this forest park. Five percent of them are severely infested and need to be cut in a sanitary operation.” Activists demand that the provincial Natural Resources Department intervene immediately, stop leaving pest-stricken trees unattended, launch urgent treatment and restoration measures, and, where necessary, cut irrecoverable trees and replace them with native, climate-adapted species. Jalilian, who heads the Natural Resources office in Kermanshah, explains that the 10-year contract with Kermanshah Tourism Development Company for managing the forest park, signed in 2016, had technically been in the process of cancellation, but due to the company’s state-owned status and interference by the governor’s office, it was extended for another year and then, citing Covid-19 and other issues, allowed to run to the end of the full 10-year term. The contract has now expired, and Natural Resources has filed suit against the company to obtain damages for the dried trees, illegal logging, and damage to the irrigation network. Once court-appointed experts calculate the losses, the company’s structures and assets will be seized in favor of the state, and if necessary, additional sums will be taken from the company’s accounts to fund restoration works. Meanwhile, under the Seventh Development Plan, Iran’s current five-year national development programme, forest parks located within city boundaries must be handed over to municipalities. The Bisotoun municipality has thus been asked to submit a management plan, which it has done, but the plan still requires revisions. Natural Resources will soon take the park back from the Tourism Development Company and, once the plan is corrected, will transfer it to Bisotoun municipality. In any efficient system, a national asset would never be left for nearly a decade in the grip of a failed operator who actively deepens the damage. Years of delay in terminating the contract with the tourism company—justified with bureaucratic pretexts such as the firm’s state-owned status, provincial interference, and the pandemic—expose a management structure unable or unwilling to move swiftly to protect public assets. The result of this procrastination is dried trees and ruined infrastructure. Now that the irreparable damage is done, the whole affair has been reduced to a long, complex lawsuit over financial compensation. Step-by-step looting: from killing the trees to selling building rights Many environmental activists and local campaigners fear that transferring the Bisotoun forest park to the municipality will open the door to corrupt investors, further tree-cutting, and eventual rezoning of the park into commercial complexes or parking lots—paved, in effect, through the sale of extra building density. Tellingly, the head of the Kermanshah Natural Resources office calls these concerns “legitimate.” This pattern has all the hallmarks of a systematic, organized plunder of national assets. State bodies not only fail to block the looting; through delay, deliberate inefficiency, and transfers to unsuitable institutions, they create the legal and administrative ground for it. Entrusting the forest to an incompetent company—and then repeatedly renewing its contract despite glaring violations—is no longer a “mistake”; it is a form of indirect complicity. The plunder typically unfolds in several calculated stages. First, through deliberate neglect (cutting off irrigation, failing to combat pests), trees are pushed toward death. Then the dried and diseased trees are cut under the pretext of sanitary operations—or quietly felled by profiteers—so that their timber can be sold. Finally, when the forest has been stripped of its trees and reduced to seemingly “worthless” land, the ground is prepared for rezoning and real-estate speculation on what was once a forest park. Selling higher building densities and erecting commercial complexes is the ultimate reward of this looting. This is not a “crisis”; it is a mafia-style economic strategy executed on the body of national resources. Beyond a local environmental disaster The issue goes far beyond a handful of trees or even a single forest. The Bisotoun case is a civilizational question, because this crisis is more than a local environmental tragedy; it is a symbol of the breakdown of the organic link between governance, historical identity, and responsibility toward the future. The deliberate and incidental destruction of a forest that stands in the shadow of the Bisotoun inscription shows a society unable to maintain the connection between its inherited past and its natural assets for future generations. This situation lays bare a management system in the Islamic Republic trapped in bureaucratic delay, devoid of accountability, and dominated by short-term profiteering. The destruction of this forest is therefore not just an environmental failure. It is a mirror of a broader crisis in which public trust has eroded, responsibility has been replaced by blame-shifting, and collective memory is being worn away—precisely the elements that form the foundations of any living, dynamic civilization.

Iran’s lethal air pollution is a nationwide crisis driven by dirty fuels, weak enforcement and sanctions, imposing a hidden economic tax and deepening social and spatial inequalities. In recent weeks, thick, toxic air has wrapped not only Tehran but many Iranian cities in a persistent health emergency. In the capital alone, the head of Tehran’s emergency services reports that over the past eight days, 31 percent of all missions were directly linked to air pollution, and 357 deaths were recorded in that period – a number to which pollution is believed to have contributed. But this is just the tip of a national iceberg. According to the Ministry of Health, in the Persian year 1402 (March 2023–March 2024) air pollution caused 30,692 premature deaths in 57 cities with a combined population of around 48 million. Of these, about 6,939 occurred in Tehran. This is no longer a series of local “bad air days”; it is a systemic, country-wide crisis of breath, health and livelihood. Why the current wave is so intense Several short-term factors have combined across different regions: • Stable autumn weather and temperature inversions that trap pollutants over basins like Tehran, Karaj and Qazvin. • Lack of effective rainfall in many provinces. • A seasonal spike in energy demand, colliding with chronic gas shortages and pushing power plants toward the dirtiest possible fuels: heavy fuel oil (mazut) and highly contaminated diesel. • The simultaneous spread of seasonal influenza, which makes lungs more vulnerable to the same toxic mix. The result is a map of cities in red and orange: in Khuzestan, for example, at least seven cities – including Ahvaz, Susangerd, Hoveyzeh and Mahshahr – have recently been classified as “unhealthy for all groups”, with eight more in the “unhealthy for sensitive groups” range. In large parts of the country, closing schools and universities, going online and issuing fragmented alerts have become almost a routine. Behind the smog: a dirty energy regime and uneven protection The depth of the crisis is not meteorological; it is political and infrastructural. Official data show how extreme the fuel problem has become: • At Rey power plant, south of Tehran, a recent fuel sample showed sulfur content in diesel more than 120 times the standard (6,012 mg/kg). • At Rajaee power plant near Qazvin, mazut with 29,612 mg/kg sulfur has been burned – 592 times the standard. • At Montazere-Ghaem near Karaj, both mazut and diesel with 6,752 mg/kg sulfur have been used – around 135 times above the limit. • Power plants in Parand and Pakdasht have also burned diesel with sulfur levels 10 to 133 times higher than allowed. Authorities insist “power plants around Tehran do not burn mazut”, but the Environment Department’s own measurements show that even what is officially labelled “diesel” is, in practice, a high-sulfur, highly toxic fuel whose effect on air quality rivals that of mazut. This is part of a broader national pattern. At least 15 power plants across Iran can burn mazut, and recent reports show daily mazut consumption surpassing 21 million litres – with capacity to rise toward 43 million. Industrial belts around cities like Arak, Qazvin, Karaj, Rey and parts of Khuzestan form hyper-polluted corridors where refineries, cement plants, petrochemical units and old power stations sit next to residential neighbourhoods. In some places, such as Kahrizak, located south of Tehran, there is not even a single monitoring station to record what residents are forced to breathe. On paper, the 2017 Clean Air Act was meant to stop exactly this. In practice, a parliamentary review found 22 of its clauses poorly implemented, 17 partially, and only 17 at an acceptable level – in open contradiction to Article 50 of the Constitution, which calls environmental protection a public duty. The “hidden tax” on cities and people Air pollution is not just an environmental issue; it is a multi-layered economic, social and political crisis. Combining national and international estimates, Iran loses at least 5.3 percent of its GDP to air pollution every year – roughly 23 billion dollars. This “hidden tax” is collected in several ways: • Premature deaths: tens of thousands of people die earlier than they should, cutting short their productive years and tearing holes in families and communities. • Reduced labour productivity: in hubs like Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan or Ahvaz, chronic smog means more sick leave, fatigue, lower concentration and more errors in sectors that are meant to drive growth. • Erosion of future human capital: children in low-income districts, often located closest to industrial zones and highways, grow up exposed to toxic particles at home and school. This affects lung development, cognitive performance and learning outcomes, entrenching inequalities across generations. • A hostile business environment and brain drain: cities where breathing is a daily health risk become less attractive for investment and long-term life plans, pushing skilled workers and capital away. International sanctions have amplified this vicious circle by delaying refinery upgrades, pushing the state toward petrochemical gasoline and high-sulfur fuels, and blocking the normal renewal of the vehicle fleet. But sanctions do not explain why the dirtiest options are chosen and kept in place, or why laws are not enforced. Those are domestic policy choices. What a responsible state would do * Immediate national emergency measures • Suspend the use of high-sulfur fuels (mazut and ultra-dirty diesel) in power plants and large industries located in or near urban areas, beginning with hotspots in Tehran–Rey, Karaj, Qazvin, Arak and Khuzestan. • Make plant-level fuel quality and emissions data public, updated daily. • Implement targeted, time-limited closures of schools, offices and large polluters on days rated “unhealthy for all”, coupled with real support for distance work and education. • Expand and redistribute emergency health services toward the most polluted and underserved zones – including informal settlements on city fringes – rather than only central districts. • Install air-quality monitoring stations in “invisible” sacrifice zones like Kahrizak and polluted industrial peripheries, so their reality cannot be erased from official statistics. * Structural shifts across cities, not only in the capital • Enforce the Clean Air Act nationwide: phase out mazut, standardise fuel quality, upgrade refineries and vehicle emission norms, and stop the production and circulation of obsolete, high-consumption vehicles and carburetor motorcycles. • Invest massively in clean, affordable public transport in all major urban regions, not only Tehran – from metro and BRT to electric buses and suburban rail. • Plan a gradual relocation and technological upgrade of the dirtiest industries away from dense residential areas, with binding guarantees that workers will not pay the price of transition. • Use humanitarian exemptions in sanctions to secure international technical cooperation and financing for air-quality improvement through UN and green development mechanisms. * From individual coping to collective pressure Masks, air purifiers and staying at home have become survival strategies for those who can afford them, but they cannot replace structural change. What can begin to break the cycle is treating clean air as a central political and social demand in all affected cities: • Demanding full transparency and accountability from power plants, refineries and industrial complexes – from Rey and Arak to Qazvin and Ahvaz. • Connecting fragmented experiences – parents of sick children, workers in polluting plants, residents of industrial suburbs – into sustained campaigns against mazut burning and toxic fuels. • Refusing the narrative that air pollution is a “natural” seasonal problem or a mere by-product of sanctions and “development”, and insisting that it is the result of concrete, reversible decisions. The current wave of smog shows that Iran’s air-pollution crisis is not “a Tehran problem” but a national regime of toxic inequality: some breathe and move more safely, others pay with their lungs, hearts and futures. To fight for clean air in Tehran, Ahvaz, Qazvin, Karaj or Mashhad is to challenge an energy and urban model that has made the simple act of breathing a stratified and deeply political question.

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