During his address at COP31, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian framed ecological preservation as a sacred duty owed to coming generations. He denounced the degradation of vital soil, water sources, and protected ecological zones, demanded external accountability, and cast his administration as a steadfast champion of clean energy.

Yet, this rhetorical positioning conveniently bypassed the regime's own profound complicity in accelerating ecological ruin across Iran.

Throughout his remarks, Pezeshkian consistently externalized blame, pointing the finger at foreign adversaries for ecological harm while painting the Iranian state as both a victim and a visionary advocate. The actions, policies, and projects spearheaded by Tehran's domestic institutions remained conspicuously unexamined.

The speech pivoted seamlessly from broad universal doctrines to sharply targeted accusations. By invoking global climate justice and shared burdens, Pezeshkian immediately redirected demands for documentation, punitive measures, and financial restitution squarely toward the United States and Israel.

True adherence to universal environmental standards demands rigorous examination of every entity whose policies degrade ecosystems. In this address, however, accountability was strictly projected outward.

Iran’s Emissions And Renewable Energy Record

Pezeshkian’s selective metrics underscored a heavily curated narrative. He cited roughly 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions stemming directly from military strikes on domestic fuel infrastructure. Absent from his accounting, however, was Iran's massive national greenhouse gas footprint, which soared to approximately 1.12 billion tonnes of CO₂-equivalent in 2025—accounting for roughly 2.1% of global emissions. While he emphasized wartime damage, he ignored the staggering volume of peacetime greenhouse gases pumped out annually.

Furthermore, his grand boasts regarding renewable energy expansion glossed over the negligible footprint that wind and solar actually hold in the national grid. Combined, renewables accounted for under 1% of Iran's electricity generation in 2025, leaving a staggering 94% reliant on fossil fuels. This heavy dependence fuels severe urban smog and public health crises. Fine-particulate air pollution alone was tied to an estimated 59,000 premature deaths nationwide in the year leading up to March 2025.

Compounding these contradictions, Iran still refuses to ratify the Paris Agreement a full decade after signing it, rendering Pezeshkian’s self-portrayal as a dedicated global climate partner deeply hollow.

Military And Industrial Encroachment In Iran’s Protected Landscapes

While Pezeshkian forcefully condemned violations against conservation areas and ranger stations, he ignored the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its routine militarization of these very same sanctuaries. The identical apparatus that embeds military infrastructure near hospitals, schools, and civilian neighborhoods—and projects force into regional conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen—has aggressively carved out a footprint inside Iran's protected habitats.

Bamou National Park in Fars province serves as a prime case study. Established in 1962 to protect rugged terrain housing Persian leopards, wild goats, and gazelles, the park has been slowly dismantled.

Successive government decrees have excised 2,711 hectares from its legal boundaries to accommodate military installations, defense-aligned commercial ventures, and urban sprawl.

These mounting pressures extend far beyond Bamou. They encompass IRGC road construction slicing through Nayband National Park in Bushehr, military bases established within the Shaho and Kosalan Protected Area in Kurdistan, and renewed commercial mining rights granted at Mount Shahvar despite vehement environmental pushback. At Tang-e Sorkh, a provincial representative in Fars openly proposed carving a highway directly through a protected zone, rationalizing the move by pointing to declining local wildlife populations. Ecological collapse is thus weaponized to justify further commercial development, rather than triggering investigations to restore the habitat. Past warnings regarding IRGC activities in protected zones are well-documented; back in 2018, the Center for Human Rights in Iran highlighted opposition reports detailing armed clashes between environmental rangers and the IRGC over clandestine missile silo construction in protected sanctuaries.

Behzad Bahrami, a former Department of Environment expert and adviser to the Iran Prosperity Project—an initiative charting a democratic transition away from the Islamic Republic—detailed firsthand observations of IRGC incursions in a 2021 testimony published by Tribune Zamaneh. Bahrami recounted witnessing heavy excavation, the construction of underground munitions depots, and the deployment of heavy military hardware inside legally protected wildlife zones. At Lashgardar, a 15,841-hectare sanctuary, the proximity of an IRGC base brought raw military force into direct, violent opposition with local wildlife protection.

“In 2010, we were dispatched to Lashgardar after receiving a report of gunfire. Rangers had witnessed a commander from the Imam Ali base shooting several wild sheep with a military weapon. An officer named Alizadeh had taken the carcasses into the base and refused to answer the rangers’ questions.” Behzad Bahrami, former Department of Environment expert and an advisor to the Iran Prosperity Project

This incident vividly demonstrates how the unchecked impunity of the IRGC shields personnel from oversight while kneecapping the civil servants tasked with conservation. This pervasive institutional muscle also safeguards lucrative commercial portfolios, allowing military-tied conglomerates to profit from land grabs and natural resource extraction while neutering regulatory checks designed to prevent ecological catastrophe.

Iran’s Water Crisis And State-Linked Contractors

Pezeshkian framed the ongoing collapse of Iran’s water systems primarily as a byproduct of foreign hostility and warfare, conveniently omitting decades of ruinous domestic mismanagement. Rampant over-extraction, water-guzzling agricultural policies, and poorly planned basin developments have utterly drained the nation's water reserves, severely compounding the impacts of recurring droughts.

Politically connected engineering giants have heavily shaped this trajectory. The IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters alongside the Jihad Nasr Institute—an engineering titan tied directly to the Ministry of Agriculture Jihad—have spearheaded massive dam building, canal digging, and inter-basin water diversion schemes. Jihad Nasr notably experienced its most aggressive expansion under former President Hassan Rouhani between 2013 and 2021, a timeline that overlapped with Isa Kalantari's tenure leading the Department of Environment.

“These megaprojects have generated lucrative contracts while diverting river flows, degrading wetlands and enabling water consumption beyond what Iran’s rivers and aquifers can sustain. The contractors have profited, while farmers and communities have borne the costs of depleted water resources and lost livelihoods.” Dr. Shirin Goli, an environmental engineer specializing in water and wastewater and coordinator of the Iran Prosperity Project's environmental group, describes the impact of major infrastructure projects on Iran's water resources.

Ultimately, Pezeshkian’s address implored the international community to levy judgment against outside actors while leaving the regime's own destructive domestic footprint shielded from examination. His invocation of foundational political doctrines only serves to deepen these inherent contradictions. The institutions holding absolute power must be judged by their real-world legacy of depleted aquifers, vanishing forests, and degraded wildlife preserves, rather than the lofty rhetoric invoked to justify their rule.

This is precisely the deception woven into the speech's carefully chosen terminology. Iran’s devastating ecological losses are reframed as evidence to indict foreign adversaries, while the domestic military and commercial profiteers driving that destruction vanish entirely from the ledger. The Islamic regime continues to demand the moral authority to speak for a natural heritage it has relentlessly compromised.