IRANIAN CAPITAL MAY BE MOVED FROM TEHRAN
/PanARMENIAN.Net/
02.11.2009 12:31 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Teheran’s days as the Iranian capital may be numbered
after a powerful government body approved a plan for a new principal
city in an attempt to protect residents from a dangerous earthquake.
It has witnessed some of Iran’s most tumultuous events: the fall of
the shah, the return of Ayatollah Khomeini and the transformation
from pro-western monarchy to revolutionary Islamic republic.
Now Tehran’s days as the Iranian capital appear numbered after a
powerful state body approved a plan for a new principal city. The idea
was proposed by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
and rubber-stamped by the expediency council.
Seismologists have warned that Tehran is liable to be struck by a
catastrophic earthquake in the foreseeable future. It is not clear
whether a new capital will be built from scratch or sited in an
existing city.
Iran has had numerous capitals during its history, including Isfahan,
Qazvin, Shiraz, Mashhad and Hamedan. Since the Qajar king Agha
Mohammad Khan declared it capital in 1795, Tehran has become the
country’s political, social, economic and cultural centre.
Its infrastructure has been left creaking by rapid population growth
that has seen it become home to 12 million people, up from 250,000
at the start of the 20th century.
A mass influx from the countryside under the last shah, Mohammad
Reza Pahlavi, fed the social discontent unleashed by the 1979 Islamic
revolution. The population has continued to spiral since then, with
unregulated development creating a traffic-clogged and polluted
urban sprawl.
Most recently, Tehran was the centre of mass street protests triggered
by the disputed re-election of the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
which opponents insist was achieved through fraud.
Plans for a new capital were first drawn up 20 years ago, but officials
only gave them serious consideration after the 2003 earthquake that
devastated the south-eastern city of Bam and killed an estimated 40,000
people. Experts warn that Tehran sits on at least 100 faultlines –
including one nearly 60 miles long – and that many of its buildings
would not survive a major quake.
Professor Bahram Akasheh, a seismologist and dean of the faculty of
basic sciences at Tehran Azad University, said the city had been
chosen as capital "by mistake" and its north-eastern suburbs were
vulnerable to an earthquake measuring eight on the Richter scale.
"I warned of this 40 to 50 years ago and if they had listened to me
then, Tehran wouldn’t have grown into a macro-city, but now control
is lost over it. The city is growing bigger and bigger every day and
so are the poor suburbs around it," he said.
He said a new capital should be built between Qom – home to the
country’s clerical establishment – and Delijan, in Markazi province,
an area that has not seen an earthquake in 2,000 years, The Guardian
reported.