War, insecurity no excuse to evade addressing dust storms: DoE chief

Masoumeh Ebtekar made the remarks on Monday during a meeting on Iran’s dust storms.

Ebtekar said that in some cases, as in the case of Amazon region, the dust storms originated from deserts in Africa, unlike Iran, have benefited the area as they have happened to help forests to thrive.

“But in Iran dust storms do not cause positive consequences,” she said.

“Conflicts and insecure conditions should not be an excuse for neighboring countries, particularly Iraq, to evade its responsibility to address the issue,” she added.

Ebtekar said that, in addition to domestic sources of dust, the dust storms sweeping Iran also have their origins in some regional countries, including Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

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