The Iranian government is auctioning everything from the country’s resources and wealth, and the latest news is that they are selling the country’s palms to the Gulf countries.
This is something that is happening after the regime cut off the water of Oasis in the southern provinces especially in Khuzestan. This is not a problem that has been created today or yesterday. The destruction of the country’s ecosystem by constructing unscientific dams that are now continuing for more than 40 years has created the base for such destruction and plunder of Iran’s natural resources because making the people hopeless to invest or work in such fields. Something that is paving the way for the regime’s lootings and destructions.
Dehydration, salinity, have caused some diseases for palms. Meanwhile, the low price of dates and the lack of guaranteed purchase of the farmers’ dates by the government have made farmers hopeless, and many of them are leaving their groves, which are falling into the hands of the regime’s mafia.
Meanwhile, this mafia is buying the palms at a very low price from farmers which is in some cases at a price of only 1.5 million Tomans, and then smuggling them to countries bordering the Persian Gulf at exorbitant prices.
The government initially denied smuggling and selling palms from the southern provinces to the Persian Gulf countries.
An official of the ‘Agricultural Jihad Organization’ of Khuzestan province told the semi-official news agency ISNA that we have not received any reports of the sale of palms to Arab countries due to water shortages.
The Dashtestan prosecutor also denied the sale of palm trees and their export to Arab countries following the publication of pictures of the cutting and transportation of palm trees.
Denial has never been a solution for the regime because in the division within the government and thanks to the existence of virtual networks, the regime’s scandals will be revealed and its denial and lies will be exposed.
At this point, the rulers have no choice but to acknowledge the essence of the matter and try to downplay and theorize the essence of the issue.
The same was true about the sale of Iran’s invaluable palms to Arab countries. Behind Egypt, Iran was once the second country with the most date production approx. 947,809 tons, with an export that is worth nearly $ 100 million. But this has been now destroyed by the government.
When the story became more widespread, Iranian government officials were forced to confess, and Khosrow Omrani Deputy for Plant Production Improvement of Bushehr’s Agricultural Jihad Organization, in an interview with Rouydad24 newspaper, confirmed the sale of 3,700 date palms to Qatar.
Hamshahri newspaper also quoted the head of the Association of Dates and Palm Growers as saying that palm smuggling to Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Arab countries has increased.
Each date palm takes nine years to give crops after planting. However, palm trees in the southern provinces, which are part of the national capital, were bought by this palm mafia at low prices from farmers due to a lack of the government’s support.
During the 8-year war with Iraq, about 2 million palms were destroyed, and now because of the destructive policies in recent years, including dams’ constructions and resulting water salinity, another 6 million palms were destroyed.
This policy has turned the southern fields into scorched earth. According to the officials of Bushehr ‘Agricultural Jihad’, in the period between 2018 and the fall of 2021, nearly 4,000 palms were exported to Qatar from this province alone.
Iran has about 50 million palms in the provinces of Khuzestan, Hormozgan, Kerman, Fars, Bushehr, and Sistan, and Baluchestan, and 400 species of dates are harvested from the country’s groves, and in this respect, Iran is the most diverse producer of dates.
