“Despite the Iranian government’s claims to the contrary, the soil of the country is being smuggled.” This is the sentence of Somayeh Rahimi, Chairman of the Parliamentary Environment Faction, who spoke clearly about this crime, something that has been denied by the regime’s officials over the past years.
Annual sedimentation of six million hectares of soil has reduced the useful life of dam reservoirs and unauthorized land-use change. This shows that not only has the regime misused this soil, but we are witnessing the continuation of the smuggling of the country’s soil to the countries of the Persian Gulf.
Why, because the soil market is one of the most profitable markets in the world, and the regime’s officials and its Revolutionary Guards are using this source for expenses and profits.
This act is creating an environmental crisis for the country. The reason why the Persian Gulf countries are buying Iran’s soil is because their soil is sandy and calcareous and is not suitable for agriculture and green environment, so they are buying Iran’s soil which is very high-grade at low prices.
The amazing part is that according to the regime’s law Article 21 the transportation and sale of the country’s soil are illegal, but this act is continuing.
Three years ago, Ali Moridi, the then director-general of the Environmental Protection Agency’s soil and water bureau said in response to the country’s soil smuggling: “Smuggling has been going on for 18 years. The destination of the smuggled soils is the Persian Gulf countries, especially the UAE and Qatar, which are used in the UAE to build artificial islands and in Qatar to dry the sea.”
The country’s soil is being smuggled, while experts say it will take 500 to 600 years to produce one centimeter of soil. The soil of any country – in addition to its spiritual value and sanctity among the people – is one of the most valuable resources in any country. Iran is known as the flagship of fertility in the Middle East, but the soil in this country has been neglected in recent years, such as air and water.
Due to the confession of the regime’s officials, this question is raised, that what is the role of the regime’s Ministry of Jihad Agriculture and the Environmental Protection and Customs Organization in preventing this act, and who is behind this act?
Hamidreza Pirvan, head of the Water and Soil Protection Engineering Group of the Regime Agricultural Research Organization, noted: “The news of soil smuggling is always denied by the competent institutions. The Organization for Forests and Rangelands is in charge of the protection of natural resource soils, and to date, it has not provided a report in this regard.
“The phenomenon of soil smuggling has been observed many times in the southern coasts of the country. My objective observations confirm this. In the 90s, while working in South Pars, I saw with my own eyes a conveyor belt moving from land to sea. When I inquired about the cargo of this conveyor, they told me that stone was supposed to be exported in this cargo, but instead of stone, they loaded the soil on the ships.
“Raw selling is very common in Iran, with many miners selling the raw material after extraction instead of turning it into a final commodity in processing plants. There is also a lot of potential for soil smuggling in the crude-selling process. Buyers of sand mines are given an area of a few square kilometers. They smuggle some of the area’s soil when mining.”
