The problems plaguing the main city cannot be solved, Masoud Pezeshkian has said
The Iranian capital should be transferred from Tehran to a city closer to the south coast, President Masoud Pezeshkian has said.
In a speech on Saturday, Pezeshkian, who took office in July, suggested that it is pointless to keep developing Tehran due to the numerous difficulties faced by the city.
The current capital is plagued by “water shortages, land subsidence and air pollution,” among other things, he said, as cited by the news outlet Javan Online.
“Tehran as the capital of the country is facing problems to which we have no solution,” the president acknowledged, suggesting that the best way out would be to “relocate the political and economic center of the country.”
Simply telling residents that they should move out of Tehran will not work, and the government “must first go ourselves so that the people would follow us,” Pezeshkian argued.
There are also economic reasons for finding a new capital closer to the Persian Gulf, through which key trading routes pass, he stressed.
“Further development of the country is impossible with the continuation of the current trend, when we bring the resources from the south of the country and the sea to the center, turn them into products there and send them back to the south for export,” the president argued.