Kamangir (Archer)

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“Close off the Whole Country!”

Kamangir | August 4, 2008 | Category Features, Iran

Recently, while chatting with friends from inside Iran, it has become very common for them to just vanish, only to come back and say that there has been a blackout.

Maryam writes,

Close off the Whole Country!

I am losing my mind and this blog is the only place where I can let off steam.

Trying to send an email, right when I was attaching a file, my connection was lost. Then, just when I got connected back, there was the blackout. We turned the emergency unit on, then we lost the connection to the Internet, then we lost the emergency power, and then the power came back on, but not the Internet….

I was in the line waiting for gas for my car. Right when it was my turn to fill up the tank, there was a power loss. Everyone rushed to the next station and that was how I ended up wasting two hours only for getting some gas.

Whichever government office and company I contact for whatever issue I am told that they are having a power loss, tomorrow their network will be down and the power loss will be the deal for the day after that.

At school, I had spent half an hour running my code when there was a power loss and I had to start over. Worst of all, the professor would not understand it!

The other day, I came home after four hours of boiling up at work, because there was no power and the air conditioning unit was off, and there was no power at home either.

I am done with this. There are blackouts every day and night. Ahmadinejad is really making all of us insane. He just wants all of us to become insane.. Close it off! Just tell us that the country is closed and that no one is supposed to do anything.

… You just put any person in this situation and they will become insane. Last night, my husband was saying that he’d rather see them be honest with the people and tell them that the blackouts are because of the sanctions. “People will understand that this is the cost of being independent”, he was saying. I, on the other hand, have no intention of becoming independent. What is the deal? There was the noise of rockets and bombs around when I was born, then there was the sanctions, and now we have the sanctions and there are talks of war. Someone has to ask God why he has created us!

Reader's Comments

Rebecca | August 4th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Thank you for translating this - Rebecca
Matthew | August 4th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
This is the cost of a statist economy that treats the population like a liability.
Maryam | August 5th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Dear Kamangir thank you very much for translating and publishing my post .It’s my honor :)

Kamangir: The honor is mine Maryam Jan.
ella | August 5th, 2008 at 9:32 am
@Maryam

Could you tell your husband that “being independent” is not the only reason for black-outs. The black-outs are the cost of higher oil prices which other countries are paying to Iran and other ME countries. Just look at it that way. You (Iran) are selling oil/gas at high prices, the other countries buy it and use that oil for electricity production, for cars, for airplanes, for manufacturing. The cost of these things gets higher plus the transportation consts get higher. And then you will pay more for products (the formerly the cheap ones) from china, from South America and so on. Now, to pay for these products Iran have to sell more oil but you do not have enough oil for domestic consumption because of sanctions (old machinery) so you sell more oil and get more money but the cost of products gets up. …….see the trend?
MInd you I am not economist, it’s just my down-to-earth explanation that no country can be completely independent……economically or politically.

@ Archer
Thanks for the great translation.
Matthew | August 5th, 2008 at 9:52 am
From a domestic policy standpoint, the blackouts are cunning. Iranians know they have rolling blackouts and will call for more power generation. The IR leadership will then claim that once the nuclear fuel cycle is mastered there will be endless power for all.
Robby | August 5th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
“Last night, my husband was saying that he’d rather see them be honest with the people and tell them that the blackouts are because of the sanctions…”

I’d like to ask from those who may know - are the sanctions have impact on life in Iran? Are the sanctions really the cause of the power outages?

Thanks,
Robby
Maryam | August 6th, 2008 at 8:32 am
@Robby
yes!unfortunately we have many problems with our power plants facilities and devices.they are decrepit and need for some changes.but sanction causes many delays in delivering new items so many power plant can’t work properly.
Robby | August 6th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Maybe I am naive, but it would seem that a country that is able to get this far with nuclear power could master the technology of existing power plants, even build their own.

What does the Iranian press say about the power outages?

What do the politicians say?
Matthew | August 7th, 2008 at 3:00 am
Robby,

The government of the Islamic Republic does not want the Iranian people to have power. As long as the lights go out in Iran, the government can continue to claim it needs nuclear power to aid the ailing grid. It’s a way of rallying people around the nuclear program–part of legitimizing the mullahs’ push for nuclear weapons. It’s quite savvy.
Don Cox | August 10th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
South Africa is having similar power cuts. It has nothing to do with sanctions, but with bad management. In the case of Iran, the government has clearly neglected to maintain the equipment. Maintenance is not glamorous or exciting, unlike making centrifuges and scaring everybody.

Saddam’s regime in Iraq also neglected maintenance of almost everything.

Don’t tell me that an advanced country like Iran is incapable of making spare parts for standard electrical generating plant, or building new oil fired power stations. How many engineering graduates come out of Iran’s universities every year?