October 05, 2018
Issa Kalantari, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has accused the Pasdaran of meddling in the agricultural sector and wasting the country’s financial resources on ineffective projects that are further eroding Iran’s water supplies.
In a rare public critique of the Pasdaran, Kalantari, who previously served as the minister of agriculture, pointed out that Iran’s Ministry of Agriculture cannot devise and implement its policies efficiently and independently because it is “under the influence of military institutions.”
He added that military leaders make key decisions on agricultural issues and claimed that those decisions and plans are often counterproductive.
Kalantari complained that the Pasdaran have arrested several environmental activists and workers on espionage charges, suggesting that the main reason for the arrests since last January was that they had questioned Pasdar policies on environmental and agricultural issues.
Kalantari’s remarks were a reaction to a recent statement by Mohammad-Reza Naqdi, former head of the Basij, a subdivision of the Pasdaran, who claimed that Iran has the capacity to produce sufficient food for 1.5 billion people. “When General Naqdi expresses an opinion as a military official saying that Iran has the potential to produce food for a large number of people and our scientific associations remain silent to such an assertion, it makes all decision-makers go astray,” he said.
According to Kalantari, the Pasdaran consider global warming to be a foreign conspiracy.
The Washington-based Middle East Institute commented that Pasdar agents in recent months “have arrested scores of water management and environmental experts and activists on spurious charges.” It said they are accused of working for foreign intelligence agencies; “but, in reality, the Pasdaran target these individuals because it considers them a threat to its environmentally-destructive construction projects.
“Reports in the Iranian media reveal that many water management experts, for example, have been arrested after questioning unscientific Pasdar-built dam projects, which have exacerbated water scarcity and land degradation in different parts of the country,” the Middle East Institute said.