Early this week, Isa Kalantari, the director of Iran’s Department of Environment, called the continuation of “environmental schools” illegal, cancelling their licenses and preventing them from continuing operation. Since last year in fact, half of these environmental schools have
been closed by the Islamic government and permits for opening new schools, granted in the past, have also been revoked.
Kalantari has stated the reason for the suspension of these schools as “religious” or due to a lack of religious teachings or for connections to the Tudeh Party.1 Nature or environmental schools were centers that had nothing to do with the Tudeh Party,
working solely to educate children and adolescents about life skills and to familiarize them with environmental issues. These schools, which started operation in 2014, were founded by Dr. Abdolhossein Vahabzadeh, along with a number of other Iranian environmental experts and activists who cared deeply about environmental issues. Dr. Vahabzadeh is a prominent Iranian environmental scientist who completed his studies in environmental sciences at U.S. universities and has been teaching for the last 40 years.
Families agreeable to the establishment of these schools alongside interest from students to learn more about the environment and to become more environmentally friendly have led to the establishment of more than 90 “nature schools” in various provinces of Iran within the last three years.
It is clear that the popularity of these nature schools has angered the Friday Prayer Imams and other religious authorities. In these schools, compulsory religious studies which have been the hallmark of public and private education in Iran for the last 40 years were not taught. Children and adolescents spent their time learning about nature and the environment instead of going to mosques and listening to boring religious lessons.
At the same time, it should be noted that 2017 marked the culmination of an onslaught by the ruling regime on environmentalists, through the death of prominent figures like Dr. Kavous Seyed-Emami in prison in 2018, as well as the imprisonment and torture of hundreds of environmental experts, some of whom continue their work and activities while in prison.
In fact, 2017 has been the year in which the role that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the military play in attacking Iranian environmentalists and preventing their efforts has been revealed. This is most likely due to the fact that the government’s illegal nuclear operations could be exposed.

(1) The Tudeh Party was the name of the pro-Soviet communists who began their activity in Iran in 1941. The party was outlawed before the Islamic Revolution (1979); however, during the revolution it re-emerged. Unlike other socialist groups that were initially
separated from Muslim revolutionaries, whose members were mostly arrested by the
government and frequently sentenced to death, the Tudeh party had the full support of
the Islamic State. In fact, they worked closely with the government, advising and guiding
them on different issues, until they were also disbanded and announced illegal in early
1981.
August 17, 2019