Iran’s Plasco Catastrophe: Who Is Responsible?

The horrific inferno that engulfed Tehran’s iconic Plasco building, rendering a heartbreaking scene of a 20-story building crumbling to the ground, and accidentally broadcasted live on state TV, came as a catastrophic shock for all Iranians.

To add to the pain, dozens of brave firemen who rushed to the scene ultimately sacrificed their lives in an effort to save their brethren. And amazingly, the Iranian regime refuses to provide an exact number of firefighters who perished in a disaster that should have prevented. Reports have circled of 30 and up to 75 losing their lives in this tragedy.

Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi “extended her condolences to the people of Tehran and particularly the families of the victims on this tragic loss and urged Tehran’s residents to rush to the aid of the injured.”

This incident has terrified the mullahs’ regime as all Iranians realized the predictable and preventable nature of this atrocity. And how the regime’s establishment and the so-called “Mostazafan Foundation”–controlled directly by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei–is fully responsible.

This is exactly why Khamenei resorted merely to a short message after this incident, emphasizing “… determining the reason behind this event is of secondary importance.”

Why should this be a secondary issue? Simple. Prior warnings had fallen on deaf ears, and Khamenei fears damning revelations.

“Time and again the fire department and safety experts had warned of Plasco’s unsafe conditions, and today we have witnessed the result of this negligence,” head of Tehran’s City Council Construction Committee said, according to Iran’s state Mehr news agency.

Ironic is how state media place the blame on the building owner, refusing to go as far as to indicate the fact that the owner is none other than the Mostazafan Foundation, and to this end, Khamenei himself.

Senior regime officials have gone as far as actually placing the blame on the building’s residents, who have lost their lives or all their belongings.

Not only was this building completely outdated and time-worn, it also contained numerous cases of safety violations. No official institution stepped forward to take any serious action to remedy such a disease. One such violation involves the storage of huge amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel on Plasco’s roof, preparing all necessary conditions for a scorching fire.

This goes despite the unfortunate experience the world went through in 9/11 as huge flames victimized New York’s Twin Towers. Flames in the upper levels of any skyscraper is an obvious safety risk, and all precautions are necessary.

From 8 am from when the fire ignited to 11 am when Plasco came down, there was three hours of time to get all people out of this building, small in comparison to skyscrapers in today’s modern cities. And yet, senior officials failed to take any serious measures to have the building evacuated and prevent further entrances.

To add insult to injury, it has become painfully clear how Tehran’s fire equipment are utterly elementary and outdated, and can never respond to the needs of Tehran’s 12-million population. This is a city with hundreds of skyscrapers and tall buildings.

In Tehran alone buildings are decaying as we speak, amounting to more than 4,400 hectares of city space with countless vulnerable buildings of all heights. It is quite obvious Iran’s other cities are in no better conditions than its capital.

Iran’s corrupt and plundering regime, ruled by the mullahs, has for years left the country’s cities and villages defenseless, as seen in 2003 Bam and 2012 East Azerbaijan Province quakes, leaving scores of towns and villages leveled and hundreds of thousands dead, injured and/or displaced.

In the meantime, this very regime has wasted the Iranian people’s God-given wealth in pursuit of lethal terrorism and warmongering in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and beyond.

As long as the mullahs’ are in power, we will unfortunately be witness to more such atrocities, and more innocent people will perish.