“The environment is one of the silent victims of war,” Shina Ansari, Iran’s vice president and head of the Department of Environment, told the BRICS Environment Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhi held in August 2026.

Her remarks echoed an earlier statement at the ECO environment ministers’ meeting in Uzbekistan, where she condemned the February 28 US-Israeli attacks on Iran. Ansari said the attacks had targeted protected areas, causing “irreparable damage” to regional ecosystems, particularly the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.

Ansari’s account frames Iran’s environment as a victim of foreign aggression, while overlooking the damage inflicted by the regime she represents. For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic has prioritised ideological goals, militarisation and economic self-sufficiency over environmental protection, treating nature as an expendable resource in pursuit of its political, military and development ambitions. This same approach has extended into Iran’s protected areas, where the IRGC has established military infrastructure with little environmental oversight.

“Iran’s ecological crisis is not merely a record of poor management,” said Shirin Goli, head of the Environmental Group at the Iran Prosperity Project. “It is the consequence of a political system that has repeatedly sacrificed ecological stability to military, ideological, and economic priorities.”

Protected Areas Under Military Control

Former Iran Department of Environment official traced this activity to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency.

“Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s first presidential term, the IRGC has sought to exploit United Nations provisions concerning the protection of protected areas, even during wartime, by deploying missile and air-defence equipment inside many of Iran’s protected areas. The IRGC entered these protected areas without obtaining any permit from the Department of Environment.”

In 2018, IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour announced that military roads and bases had been built in the Shaho mountain, part of the Kosalan and Shaho Protected Area. Pakpour celebrated the security created by the new military infrastructure without addressing its consequences for the protected landscape.

Such construction fragments habitats and disturbs wildlife, while restrictions on environmental oversight make the damage harder to assess.

Environmental Officials Kept Out

Bahrami described being denied access during an official inspection of Almobolagh Protected Area:

“During a mission in 2007, I went with three park rangers and two Department of Environment experts, including ranger Abbas Abedi and chief inspection expert Vahid Nouri, to the Almobolagh Protected Area in the highlands of Asadabad County. Despite the fact that we were carrying out an official mission in a Department of Environment vehicle, IRGC personnel prevented us from entering the area.”

He continued: “After weeks of correspondence, environmental officials obtained permission for us to enter with great difficulty. Unfortunately, we witnessed construction, heavy vehicles, drilling machinery and extensive destruction. Access points from the direction of Baba Ali and the village of Jannatabad had been blocked by the IRGC.”

The episode reveals how easily the IRGC can override Iran’s environmental authorities. A protected designation carries little weight when officials cannot enter an area without military approval.

Khojir National Park And Missile Production

The relationship is also visible east of Tehran. Khojir National Park is one of Iran’s oldest protected areas and forms part of an important landscape alongside Sorkheh Hesar National Park and the Jajrud Protected Area. Yet the Khojir missile-production complex sits nearby.

Satellite images examined in 2024 showed more than 30 new buildings at the Khojir complex and the Modarres military base. Researchers assessed the expansion as an effort to increase missile production, a conclusion confirmed by three senior Iranian officials.

“There is a staggering dishonesty in placing strategic military infrastructure in or beside ecologically sensitive landscapes and then invoking those landscapes as symbols of innocent environmental victimhood when they are struck,” said Bahram Vahedi, an author and adviser to the Iran Prosperity Project.

The issue is not whether nature deserves protection during conflict; it unquestionably does. The issue is that placing strategic military assets beside protected environments transfers the risks created by the regime’s military ambitions onto wildlife, ecosystems and nearby communities. Militarising the landscape makes environmental harm more likely before a strike ever occurs.

From National Parks To Megaprojects

Nayband National Park in Bushehr Province, Iran’s first national marine park, provides another example.

“The IRGC entered Nayband National Park in Bushehr Province, built missile installations and stationed missile launchers there,” Bahrami wrote . “Petrochemical companies affiliated with Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters have also undertaken unauthorized military construction in this national park.”

Environmental pressure extends beyond military installations. Khatam al-Anbiya, the IRGC’s engineering conglomerate, is involved in major infrastructure schemes across Iran. One route transferring desalinated seawater from the southern coast to the central plateau crosses the Tarem Protected Area . Its environmental risks, questionable economics and Khatam’s role have generated opposition.

These cases are not isolated abuses by one military institution. They reflect a system in which powerful state bodies operate without meaningful accountability, while environmental law and scientific expertise are repeatedly subordinated to the regime’s survival. The IRGC’s activities in protected areas are part of the same model that has depleted Iran’s water resources , degraded ecosystems and left the Department of Environment too weak to challenge powerful state interests.

Ansari is right that nature should not become collateral damage in war. But Iran’s environment also needs protection from the political system she represents. As long as the Islamic Republic places ideological, military and economic ambitions above environmental protection and management, the economy of Iran will suffer. Clean water, clean air and healthy soils are the foundations of a thriving economy and lasting prosperity for the Iranian people.