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Analysis: Moving Day For Tehran

The vast majority of buildings in Tehran (pictured) - which rests on the convergence of some 100 known fault lines - are believed to be incapable of withstanding a moderate earthquake measuring even 6 on the Richter scale.
by Jason Motlagh
Washington (UPI) Mar 16, 2005
A top Iranian scientist called on the government last Tuesday to move the country's capital to a new location because of evidence that a major earthquake is due to hit Tehran that could kill hundreds of thousands of residents.

Rather than dismiss this claim as yet another wolf's cry, policymakers are taking the threat seriously and have begun looking elsewhere.

What concrete steps this course of action will demand, when and where, remains uncertain for a city of 12 million people living on a geological time bomb.

"The Supreme National Security Council will shortly discuss a plan to move the capital from Tehran," SNSC chief Hassan Rohani was quoted as saying by the Hayat-e No newspaper Wednesday.

He added that a plan had been formulated by the SNSC in 1991, "but due to resistance from certain entities in the establishment, the plan was halted."

This official statement was an overdue shift from a government many have criticized for its failure to enact sweeping infrastructural improvements across a country that is no stranger to nature's wrath.

The United Nations has said that Iran, which sits at the meeting point of three of the Earth's tectonic plates, is the most earthquake-prone country in the world. Seismologists note that Iran averages one minor temblor per day, with devastating exceptions.

In December 2003, a quake in the historic city of Bam killed at least 26,000 people. The rural area of Zarand in southern Iran was struck by a subsequent quake February 2005 in which more than 500 people died.

Overall, the International Federation of the Red Cross estimates between 143,000 and 178,000 Iranians have perished in 19 major earthquakes between 1909 and December 2003.

While past disasters have taken a heavy toll in human life, experts contend that a quake o n par with the one that rocked Bam would be catastrophic for the capital.

Bahram Akasheh, the Tehran University geophysicist who has been urging re-location, has said a 6.8 quake in Tehran would kill more than 700,000 people.

The vast majority of buildings in Tehran - which rests on the convergence of some 100 known fault lines - are believed to be incapable of withstanding a moderate earthquake measuring even 6 on the Richter scale.

Despite a recent surge in construction, more than half of the city's buildings are believed to be non-reinforced masonry structures.

Akasheh warned that government buildings would be leveled as well, leaving the state helpless to react to a national emergency and placing national security at risk.

One newspaper further reported that an earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter scale would knock out 90 percent of city hospitals.

"Tehran must be rebuilt; if not it should be moved," Akasheh told the BBC last week.

"Either we have to put up with millions of dead, millions of injured, or we need to move the capital somewhere else and take steps to decrease the population here and make Tehran more resistant to earthquakes."

There is a 90 percent chance of a 6.0-magnitude quake hitting the capital and a 50 percent chance of 7.5-magnitude earthquake, according to his latest calculations.

Retrofitting or reconstructing shoddy public buildings in Tehran is widely accepted as being both too costly and insufficient. Now that the government is on board to move, the question is: where to?

Officials at Iran's Mission to the United Nations could not be reached for comment.

But Akasheh has already recommended to President Mohammad Khatami that the capital be switched to Isfahan, which previously served as the seat of government until it was moved to Tehran in 1788. He conceded it will not be easy, but that urgency trumps expense.

"The moving of the capital is not something that can be done in a year or two," he told Radio Free Europe in an interview. "We need 20 to 30 years for gradually moving the population out of the capital. We can't move the capital in one night. This needs a lot of time and a huge budget, but we shouldn't allow ourselves to be caught off-guard against a fait accompli, that in one night ... Tehran will be turned to zero."

Other insiders have argued in favor of building satellite towns outside the capital to relocate some government ministries.

In 1998, Iran's neighbor, Kazakhstan, shifted its capital from Almaty to Astana in the face of an earthquake hazard, without a hiccup in its economic growth.

However, if a new capital is to be created from scratch as some Iranian parliamentarians have endorsed, odds are that it will more closely parallel developments in South Korea, where construc tion has started on one of Asia's most ambitious construction projects.

The South Korean government will break ground in two years to build a new capital 100 miles south of Seoul in the sleepy region of Gongju-Yongi, at a cost of nearly $50 billion.

The decision was made to ease urban overcrowding and reduce the threat of an attack from the north. By 2012, 85 ministries and 230,000 employees will have moved, along with an anticipated half million residents. The changeover is scheduled to be completed by 2020.

But if experts are to be believed, Iran does not have the luxury of such a timetable. The head of the International Seismographic Research Center of Iran's Ministry of Science has said the probability of a severe earthquake in Tehran in the next 10 years hovers around 65 percent.

Recent events suggest pressures building deep beneath its crowded streets could explode sooner.

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