An environmental disaster is unfolding in Tehran and across Iran, with severe consequences for public health and the environment, The Caspian Post reports citing local media.
The air has turned toxic, transforming entire cities into what residents call "gas chambers," which could suffocate the population.
This is not an exaggeration but a grim reality millions of Iranians face.
The crisis knows no bounds.
Whether in Tehran, the capital, or smaller towns like Oshnavieh in the northwest and Behbahan in the south, citizens share a desperate struggle to breathe.
Burning eyes, constant throat irritation, and persistent headaches have become the new normal. Even the simple act of looking at the sky feels like an assault on the respiratory system.
In Khuzestan province alone, 885 people were rushed to emergency rooms with non-infectious cardiac and respiratory complications on December 9.
Health Minister Mohammadreza Zafarghandi revealed that around 50,000 people in Iran die each year due to air pollution. An estimated 30,000 to 35,000 deaths annually in Tehran and 7,000 in other cities are directly linked to poor air quality.
Environmental experts point to several factors contributing to the crisis, including the widespread use of substandard fuels such as mazut in industrial and power plant operations. In response, authorities have urged residents to limit travel and wear masks when necessary. Several provinces have even closed schools in an attempt to reduce exposure.
The crisis particularly threatens vulnerable populations, including children, the elderly, and individuals with pre-existing heart and respiratory conditions.
In many regions, the air pollution index has long surpassed even the "dangerous" and "very unhealthy" thresholds.
Mansour Sohrabi, an agroecologist and researcher in ecology and environmental studies, told IranWire, "The fundamental issue is that pollution sources in Iran have not been eliminated. The number of vehicles has increased, non-standard fuel is being produced, and the regime prefers to spend $30 billion to keep Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria rather than replacing aging buses."
Air pollution has spread far beyond the capital and major cities.
In past years, residents of Tehran have been escaping to northern cities when schools have closed due to pollution. This November and December, however, traces of pollution from Tehran and nearby Karaj have even reached the ski resorts of Shemshak and Dizin.
Sediqeh Torabi, Deputy of the Environment Department, said, "Over the past three years, we analyzed all the days when the air pollution index exceeded 100 ppm and ranked the polluted cities accordingly. Ahvaz, Isfahan, Tehran, Mashhad, Alborz, and Arak have become, respectively, the most polluted metropolises in Iran."
The sources of this pollution have been identified as sulfur emissions in Arak, fuel combustion particles from aging vehicles in Tehran and Mashhad, and emissions from steel and iron industries in Isfahan.
In recent days, the city of Behbahan in Khuzestan province has also been shut down due to air pollution.
Although no official explanation has been provided regarding the city's pollution sources, the Bidboland Persian Gulf Refinery operations have long impacted the city’s air quality.
Around the same time, the Deputy Head of the Environment Department in West Azerbaijan province announced that, according to air quality indices, the air in Oshnavieh was categorized as "dangerous and very unhealthy" over the past 24 hours.
The latest National Air Pollution Reduction Task Force meeting, focusing on Khuzestan, was held on December 12, attended by the Vice President, the Head of the Environment Department, and the Governor of Khuzestan.
During the meeting, Vice President Shina Ansari said, "The main sources of pollutants in Khuzestan are oil and gas industries, burning metal, sugarcane waste, and dust hotspots, which resulted in 212 days of unhealthy conditions in the province last year."
Vice President Mohammad Jafar Qaempanah announced that, by order of President Masoud Pezeshkian, mazut burning would be stopped in response to the crisis in Arak, Karaj, and Isfahan, which contributes to air pollution and diseases.
However, discussions about potential power blackouts soon emerged, and the electricity company immediately announced blackout schedules. It quickly became clear that the government was more concerned about fuel shortages for power plants than the effects of burning mazut on air quality.
Despite the decision to stop burning mazut in three power plants, the capital still experienced suffocating air quality in November and December.
Journalists questioned Shina Ansari about the effectiveness of this measure in improving air pollution. She responded, "It was never intended that stopping mazut burning in three power plants would solve air pollution in Tehran."
Less than a month after the government decided to halt mazut burning, Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi assured parliament and said, "We have no limitations in supplying or producing electricity."
Meanwhile, the Minister of Oil, Mohsen Pakjejad, emphasized, "The Ministries of Energy and Oil are doing their best to ensure that the coming months will pass with minimal challenges."
However, after the oil and energy ministers attended a National Security Council meeting to discuss stopping household electricity cuts and declared that there were no electricity production or fuel supply issues to power plants, mazut burning resumed in thermal power plants.
In the wake of this, Sediqeh Torabi, Deputy Head of the Environment Department, announced that legal action had been taken against the Ministries of Energy and Oil for failing to comply with the guidelines on halting mazut burning in power plants like Shazand in Arak, Montazer Qaem in Karaj, and Shahid Montazeri in Isfahan.
IranWire has learned that the president applied significant pressure to the head of the Environment Department regarding lawsuits against the two ministries over mazut burning.
Shina Ansari later said in a meeting at Sharif University, "The imbalance in petrol production is one of the country’s problems, which leads to the production of petrol that sometimes does not meet necessary standards, contributing to increased pollutants."
Administration spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani immediately responded on X regarding the non-standard quality of domestically produced petrol, saying, "After following up with the honorable Minister of Oil, it was clarified that most of the petrol produced in the country complies with Euro 4 standards."
However, despite the spokeswoman's denial, there is another indicator of the poor quality of domestically produced petrol.
In a December 12 task force meeting on air pollution in Khuzestan, Governor Mohammadreza Movalizadeh requested an increase in the Euro 4 petrol quota for the province, indicating that substandard petrol is being used.
These incidents echo the damage caused by the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when they introduced "petrochemical petrol" to undermine the effects of sanctions.
Mansour Sohrabi, the environmental researcher who spoke to IranWire, analyzed the worsening air pollution situation in recent weeks. He said, "Due to the policies it has adopted, the regime is trapped in a vicious and problematic cycle, and every step it takes creates a crisis."
He added, "On one hand, the policies of the Islamic Republic have led to sanctions, preventing essential investments in Iran, and on the other hand, systemic corruption has hindered necessary reforms."
"Crisis management has three stages: before the crisis, monitoring must take place to assess potential risks, leading to actions that minimize damage during the crisis," he explained.
"In the case of air pollution, the renovation of the car industry, public transportation fleets, scrapping old vehicles, improving refinery quality, and technology-especially in the production of heavy fuels-should have been done, but none of these actions have been taken."
He concluded that the government only manages the crisis by closing schools and offices to reduce human casualties.
"The regime was willing to spend $30 billion in Syria to save Bashar al-Assad, while it could have invested this money in Iran's refineries to produce better-quality petrol. This way, we wouldn't be seeing the increase of sulfur particles in the skies of Isfahan, Karaj, or Tehran these days."
Sohrabi emphasized that air pollution has been a longstanding issue in Iran, dating back to 1963. Yet, over the past six decades, no meaningful steps have been taken to address the crisis.
