"Soft War"- Iran Blames The West For Its Drought

Like many countries in the world, Iran has been dealing with droughts. But rather than acknowledge that we have no control over Mother Nature, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad likes to blame humans. Not in the man-made "global warming" kind of way, but in the pointing fingers at certain countries in the West kind of way.
Last May, Mahmoud actually blamed the West for sucking the water out of rain clouds and diverting it to their own lands. Ironically, the day he made that statement, it began to rain. This is what he said at the inauguration of a dam in Markazi province:

"Western countries have designed plans to cause drought in certain areas of the world, including Iran. According to reports on climate, whose accuracy has been verified, European countries are using special equipment to force clouds to dump" their water on their continent, he said.

By doing so, "they prevent rain clouds from reaching regional countries, including Iran," Mr Ahmadinejad charged.

He based his argument on some "Western" politician's article that claimed:

"droughts in some regions spanning from Turkey and Iran to east of Asia are predicted for the next 30 years. The regions (referred to in) the article ... include countries whose culture and civilisation frighten the West."

So that was last year. I guess they're still in a drought, because Iran's VP Hassan Mousavi, just declared that south Iran's drought is now a direct result of a "soft war" instigated by the West.

“I am suspicious about the drought in the southern part of the country. The world arrogance and colonist (term 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.”

Apparently, Iran has been experiencing severe sand storms emanating from Iraq, which has had an increase in desertification as a result of two wars. I'm surprised they aren't blaming Iraq for their drought woes.

Not that they're the only conspiracy nuts out there who buy into that theory. Kurt Nimmo over at Alex Jones' Infowars seems to concur, as do all the other wacko commenters responding to his post.

No, Mahmoud, Hassan and Kurt, the West isn't causing Iran's droughts. If the U.S. had control over the weather we wouldn't have 80% of this country under drought conditions.

Maybe Iran needs to take a look at their actions and see if something they are doing isn't somehow messing with the environment, like drying up Iraq's rivers.

The UK-based International Centre of Development Studies (ICD) warned of an environmental catastrophe that might hit the eastern and southern provinces of Iraq if Iran keeps on tampering with Iraq’s share of rivers that run through both countries.

The ICD report, obtained by Al Arabiya, stated that Iran stopped the flow of Alwand River, which runs from western Iran to eastern Iraq, for the past four years.

This caused the damage of around 10% of arable land and rendered the residents of several villages around the river homeless.

The production of several crops has also been greatly affected whether through quantity with a loss that amounted to 80% in some years or through quality that has witnessed a remarkable drop.

Iran, the report added, has also been pumping drainage water into several Iraqi rivers, which led to a rise in their salinity levels and in turn inflicted a substantial damage on marine life, basically demonstrated in the death of several fish species.

This also caused the migration of birds that lived in the area and the emergence of snakes which attack crops and kill livestock.

Iran has also diverted several tributaries of the Tigris River and built dams on others, which had a negative impact on the residents of provinces overlooking the river.

Read the rest here.

**Note: Al Arabiya inocrrectly quoted International Centre of Development Studies as the source of the information rather than Institute of Development Studies (IDS). I have changed it per ICD's request.