Sivand Dam Will be Flooded Next Week - Archaeological and Cultural News of the Iranian World

LONDON, (CAIS) -- Parviz Fatahi, the Islamic Republic's Energy Minister, on Thursday announced that by next week the Sivand dam will become operational, reported Persian service of ILNA.

According to Fathi, the Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organisation (ICHTO), has finally agreed to the inundation of the dam.

It seems the Islamic Republic has coordinated the inundation of the dam, to coincides with “Daheh Fajr”, the anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's return to Iran, in 1979. This day will undoubtedly will be remembered as one of the Iran's darkest days in history. In 1979 when a news reporter asked Khomeini in the airplane just before landing, after 14 years of exile what was he feeling, he responded, "Hichi" (Nothing); and when she incredulously asked again, he elaborated "Hich ehsâsi nadâram" (I don't feel a thing), and evidently his successors they "do not feel a thing" too about our heritage -- by making the dam operational, they want to bring nothingness to Iran and Iranian heritage.

He continued “history has always shown the despots and evil doers will be brought down to their knees, and the Islamic Regime is not exempt from this rule - the regime will eventually collapse and sooner or later they will join the villains of the history, and as they will be placed alongside, Alexander, Arabs and Genghis [khan], we will remember them as the destroyers of Iran and the Iranian heritage.”

Iranian national heritage has been suffering for the past 28 years, as the result of regime's policy of de-Iranianization of the country. The detestation towards anything Iranian by the regime, has either endangered, damaged or even destroyed prominently Pre-Islamic sites. In recent years the Islamic government has commissioned the construction of over 80 dams, in which all of them has been built, or going to be built over the pre-Islamic sites; the most infamous one is the Sivand dam.

Sivand dam project has been one of the most condemned projects in post-revolution Iran due to its' immense threat to Iranian cultural heritage. Most Iranians are furious about the construction of the dam and argue that there is no objective in the world worthy to justify the construction of a dam, so close to Pasargadae.

More than 130 historic sites, large numbers of clay vessels, human skeletons and other evidence of human settlement dated as far back as the eighth millennium BCE, 6000-year-old clay kilns, and most strikingly, the palace of the Achaemenid Emperor, Darius the Great (549-486 BCE) have so far been discovered at the historic site of Bolaghi Valley during an international attempt to save as much as possible the historic evidence of this area before being engulfed by the reservoir of Sivand Dam.

The perimeters of the future artificial lake behind the dam at its largest reach is 7 kilometres from Pasargadae site and 9 kilometres from Cyrus the Great’ Tomb located 45 meter above water level after inundation; -Persepolis is ten times farther than Pasargadae which is located 70 kilometres from the lake. Therefore, there are no direct threats to these two historical sites from submersion aspect of Dam’s inundation.

Nevertheless, the catastrophe for Iranian heritage is that after the dam reservoir is filed, the Bolaghi Valley which contains well over 130 ancient settlements from pre-Historic to Sasanian dynastic era (224-651 CE) will be submerged including a section of the Achaemenid Imperial’s Road (Rāh-e Šāhī). Also, the humidity changes, which artificially would be created by the dam, are going to be the key threat. Despite the regime's claim, no preliminary environmental research has ever been carried out to assess the affects of humidity upon the constructions at Pasargadae.

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