TEHRAN – Iran’s influential Shia clerics have a warning: the country’s sprawling capital is about to be hit by a killer earthquake and millions will perish.
The reason for the coming apocalypse, the clerics say, is simple: vice has spread through Tehran and God intends to punish the sinners.
“Go on the streets and repent for your sins,” Ayatollah Aziz Khoshvaqt, a high-ranking cleric, told worshippers during a recent sermon in northern Tehran. “A holy torment is upon us. Leave town.”
Even among the many urbane inhabitants of this capital of 12 million, the warning of imminent doom has not been taken lightly.
Tehran is one of the most earthquake-prone capitals in the world, built on the intersection of two tectonic plates. More than 100 fault lines lie beneath the city. A quake in the city of Bam, in eastern Iran, killed tens of thousands in 2003.
Fears about Tehran being hit by “the big one” are not new. But the increased seismic activity worldwide – from earthquakes in remote parts of China to the giant quake in impoverished Haiti, to say nothing of the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland – has only heightened fears.
Never mind that scientists say the timing of a quake is almost impossible to predict.
“If it is vice that causes earthquakes, there should be floods and volcano eruptions as well in Tehran, because all sins are committed in this huge city,” said an unemployed resident who gave his name only as Maysam.
Ayatollah Khoshvaqt has gone so far as to alert Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the danger, according to a website related to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard. In a recent speech, Mr Ahmadinejad noted a cleric had informed him that an earthquake was unavoidable.
Swift action has been taken and Mr Ahmadinejad has announced that the government should start work on programmes to help at least five million people relocate from Tehran in the coming years.
The Tehran-based National Museum of Iran has asked when its 300,000 artifacts can be taken to a safer location.
The earthquake warnings follow weeks of complaints by the religious about what they deem to be loose moral standards in the capital, particularly among women who have doffed the traditional Islamic head scarf and long coat with the arrival of spring.
“Women who do not dress modestly . . . lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes,” cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi told worshippers in Tehran last week.
The prophecies have set Tehran abuzz with rumours and conspiracy theories. People claim to have seen secret refugee camps. Others are saying certain politicians have moved their families to other cities.
Seismology experts are not pleased by the inexpert analysis.
“Belief in God is very good, but we should not put all responsibility on his shoulders,” Bahram Akasheh, a professor of geophysics, said in an interview.
Prof Akasheh is Iran’s most senior expert on earthquakes. He has been studying the ground beneath Tehran for more than 35 years and foresees a bleak future for the capital. There is, he said, a 70 per cent chance of a devastating magnitude-seven quake eventually.
“Half of the population will die. There will be a complete breakdown of all infrastructure. Nearby dams will break. Large fires will erupt. Tehran will become completely uninhabitable,” he said.
“There is no way of really avoiding this. We can’t save this city.” – (Washington Post service/Bloomberg)