The drought currently devastating southern Iran is part of a “soft war” launched against the Islamic Republic by the West, the Fars news agency quoted the vice president as saying on Monday.
“I am suspicious about the drought in the southern part of the country,” Hassan Musavi, who heads the Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization, said at a ceremony to introduce the new chief of the weather bureau.
“World arrogance and colonialism [terms used by Iranian authorities to label the West] are influencing Iran’s climate conditions using technology…. The drought is an acute issue and soft war is completely evident…. This level of drought is not normal.”
Iran has experienced numerous droughts, most recently in the south where sand storms have engulfed several cities.
Last year, President Ahmadi-nejad accused Western countries of devising plans to “cause drought” in Iran, saying that “European countries are using special equipment to force clouds to dump” their water on Europe before the clouds reach Iran.
Musavi seems to have missed the fact that the United States is currently facing one of its worst droughts in history—the worst in a half century. A total of 55 percent of the continental US is rated as under a drought and the current year’s corn crop has failed.