Despite growing concern over Iran's support for Houthi militants in Yemen, a military adviser to the Supreme Leader has announced Iran's strategic focus on the Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea.
Yahya Rahim-Safavi emphasized on Wednesday the importance of naval and aerospace forces of the Revolutionary Guards concentrating on the vital points, stating that future wars are likely to be sea-based and air-based.
Rahim-Safavi said, "We have no solution other than deepening the defense and security of the country. Our strategic defense depth is in the Mediterranean Sea, and we must increase our strategic depth by 5,000 kilometers."
The Red Sea has been effectively closed off by Iran-backed Houthi militants through a series of missile and drone strikes targeting commercial vessels.
Despite their assertion of acting in solidarity with Palestinians and targeting ships associated with Israel, the US, or Britain, few shipping companies are willing to risk traversing the region.
Iran's clerical regime has long provided substantial support to the Houthis, including funding, arms, and training, enabling them to establish and maintain control over significant areas of Yemen. Despite mounting international pressure, Iran persists in its backing of the group.
In November, the Houthis initiated attacks on Israeli ships in the Red Sea, concentrating British and US for supporting Israel’s right to defend itself in the wake of October 7.
The resulting disruptions to global maritime trade have compelled major shipping operators to divert their vessels, leading to increased shipping expenses and affecting consumer goods prices.
Dozens of villages have been affected with citizens independently working to reopen roads to deliver aid. Frustration mounts among local residents as governmental aid remains scarce. "Not even a helicopter has been sent for aid to the flood victims of Sistan and Baluchestan; only provincial and national officials flew over once and left!" remarked a local official.
Finally, after over a week of silence, government authorities have acknowledged the crisis. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei admitted on Tuesday that the floods have inflicted significant damage on the people of Sistan and Baluchestan in a nod to the disaster facing the population.
President Ebrahim Raisi started a tour of the region on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Sepehr Khalaji, Raisi’s chief publicity man, reacted to the criticism about the government’s handling of the situation, saying that although the Interior Ministry was busy with the elections, rescue and relief teams were dispatched and the minister himself visited the flood-affected areas. “All necessary work has been done... people are not abandoned.”
On Tuesday, Ali Akbar Mehrabian, the Minister of Energy, traveled to Sistan-Baluchestan to assess the extent of damage to infrastructure, according to reports from media affiliated with the government in Iran.
Despite claims from government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi that relief efforts were initiated promptly, access roads to 46 flood-affected villages remain blocked, and 31 villages are still grappling with water shortages.
Since the floods began on February 25, more than 10,000 people have been affected. Official reports indicate the destruction of at least 300 homes and damage to over 1,500 others. Agricultural land, orchards, wells, greenhouses, livestock units, and historical sites have also suffered extensive damage.
Mojtaba Saadatian, the deputy for cultural heritage, handicrafts, and tourism of Sistan and Baluchestan, stated that due to the extreme weather, 37 historical sites in the province have been damaged.
The crisis looks set to continue over the coming days as the Meteorological Organization forecasts intensifying rainfall. An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.6 further rattled the province, highlighting the vulnerability of the affected areas.
Criticism mounts against governmental priorities, with citizens accusing authorities of neglecting flood victims in favor of political pursuits. Reports emerged of ballot boxes for Friday's elections being dispatched to flood-affected areas amidst the ongoing crisis, fueling public outrage.
Mowlavi Abdolhamid, the outspoken Sunni Friday prayer leader of Zahedan, has condemned the government's failure to plan and provide infrastructure to mitigate floods. Calls for assistance persist, with appeals for heating appliances, blankets, mattresses, hygiene items, food supplies, mineral water, and tents to support flood victims.
He was banned from visiting the affected areas this week, his convoy intercepted by security forces at a police checkpoint along the Zahedan-Khash road, with two of his teenage sons detained.
Mohammad Mehdi Sajjadi, CEO of the Red Crescent, said on Saturday that water levels had risen up to half a meter and even more in many flood-affected villages.
"The floods are severe to the extent that even rescue operations are challenging, and teams sent to deliver supplies to areas besieged by floods could not return and are trapped in the region," he said.
However, many of the stranded victims have been reluctant to leave their homes, he explained, "complicating relief efforts".
It is unclear how many people have lost their lives amid the crisis. Official statistics claim there have as yet been no deaths, but Baluch sources say at least five have died.
“The Iranian nation did a jihad and fulfilled their social and civil duties,” he said, and as usual, accused “enemies” of trying to dissuade Iranians from voting. However, he claimed that they were defeated by the people’s “epic turnout and jihad.”
“Don’t the sixty percent who did not vote count as Iranians?”, former reformist lawmaker Mahmoud Sadeghi tweeted after Khamenei’s remarks.
According to official figures, 61.1 million Iranians were eligible to vote, and 41 percent turned out at polling stations including at least 5 percent who cast void and blank votes. However, they were so many electoral gimmicks before and during the election day that few believe even the modest turnout numbers claimed by the government.
Blank and void votes are usually cast by those who may have been rounded up and forced to vote against their wish such as government employees, soldiers, and athletes, and could be interpreted as “protest votes”.
In a note from Tehran’s Evin Prison, dissident reformist politician Mostafa Tajzadeh called the elections “engineered” and a “historic failure” of the system and the person of Khamenei, both in terms of turnout and mandate of those to occupy the seats of the parliament in a few months from now.
Tajzadeh was responsible for holding the parliamentary elections of 2000 as deputy interior minister. An outspoken critic of Khamenei since the controversial presidential elections of 2009, he has spent more than eight years behind bars since then.
The regime made every effort to ensure a high turnout in a bid to prove its legitimacy both domestically and internationally, but many social media users claim the election boycott was extremely successful and “epic”.
They point out that for the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, at least 60 percent of eligible voters chose not to vote in elections that they considered stage-managed in every step of the way and extremely unfair.
Many social media users have also alleged that the official turnout figure of 41 percent is nothing to be proud of, by Khamenei’s own standards, even if it were true.
Social media users have also extensively shared the video of a Khamenei’s sermon in 2001 in which he mocked Western countries for low turnout in their elections. He said in his sermon that a turnout of 40 percent was a cause of shame and indicated that the citizens of these countries, including the United States, did not trust their political system.
The extremely low mandate of top candidates in all constituencies could only mean a much lower turnout, many argue.
Mahmoud Nabavian who has the highest number of votes in the parliamentary elections this time, with around 600,000 ballots, had ranked 52nd in the elections of 2015 with 692,000 votes. The total number of his votes is slightly more than the last of Tehran’s 30 representatives in the parliamentary elections of 2020.
The number of eligible voters in Tehran was 7.77 million in these elections so Nabavian is representing 7.7 percent of the eligible voters. According to official figures, only 24 percent of Tehran’s eligible population voted.
The top elected candidate in Tehran has never had less than 844,000 in previous elections.
Nabavian is a member of the small but very influential ultra-hardliner Paydari Party.
The current speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, has dropped to the 4th place in Tehran this time and only received 447,000 votes. His weaker position may become a challenge to his ambitions of leading the next parliament, analysts say.
