Stone rain: the strange case of nuclear folklore in Iran’s post-1979 revolution major earthquakes

ABSTRACT

Iran lies in an earthquake belt, and many Iranians have highlighted memories of natural disasters. While visiting Bam, a city destroyed by a severe earthquake, my team and I realized that some inhabitants attribute the disaster to nuclear tests. These rumours were also heard from the survivors of the earthquake in Sarpol-e Zahab in 2018. Looking deeper into the roots of nuclear rumours, I found the origin of rumours about the unnatural cause of the earthquake many years earlier, before the 1979 revolution and in the Tabas 1978 disaster. In this article, the nuclear folklore around earthquakes in Iran has been investigated. Analysing public opinion about disasters without considering their perceptions, rumours, and folklore is not complete. The current study reveals an overlooked mechanism based on the long-term dictatorship and untrustful media have made understanding the disasters complicated in the country.

KEYWORDS:

• Nuclear folklore
• nuclear test
• earthquake
• Iran
• Tabas

Acknowledgements

The author would like to appreciate Cornelius Holtorf for his support and suggestion to categorize the rumours about the origins of the earthquakes under the title ‘nuclear folklore’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Freedom Movement of Iran or Liberation Movement of Iran is an Iranian political organization founded in 1961.

2. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) was the last Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty of Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow in the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979.

3. On 8 September 1978, opposition and revolutionary demonstrations in the southern neighbourhoods of Tehran, former Jaleh Street (now Mojahedin-e-Islam Street) and Jaleh Square (present-day Shohada Square) led to a bloody crackdown on demonstrators by the Royal Iranian Army.

4. Heinz Kaminski (15 June 1921 in Bochum–17 February 2002 in Arnsberg) was a German chemical engineer and space researcher.

5. Intelligence and Security Organization of the Country.

6. This sentence seems grammatically and meaningly incorrect. The writer does not mention why the explosion ‘needs’ a hole (it may be a misspelling between verbs, to need and to create).

7. Ali Shariati Mazinani (23 November 1933–18 June 1977) was an Iranian revolutionary and sociologist who focused on the sociology of religion.

8. Farah Pahlavi (born Farah Diba, 14 October 1938) is the widow of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and was the Queen and successively Shahbanu of Iran from 1959 to 1979.

9. Yaghoub Daneshdoost (1938–2022) was an Iranian architect, conservator, and researcher. He was the director of the Office for Conservation of Historic Monuments in Tabas at the time of Tabas earthquake.

10. Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (17 May 1900–3 June 1989) was an Iranian political and religious leader. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

11. The Red Lion and Sun Society of Iran was established in 1922 and admitted to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in 1923.

12. Jafar Sharif-Imami (17 June 1912–16 June 1998) was an Iranian politician who was prime minister from 1960 to 1961 and again in 1978.

13. Mohammad Sadoughi was an Iranian Shia Ayatollah born in 1905 in Yazd and was finally assassinated by People’s Mujahedin of Iran (group) on 2^nd July 1982 after saying Friday Prayer.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leila Papoli-Yazdi

Leila Papoli-Yazdi is a researcher at the Department of Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University. She is an archaeologist of the recent past. Since 2003, she concentrated on the disaster archaeology of Bam, a city destroyed dramatically by an earthquake. Afterward, she directed several projects in Pakistan, Kuwait, and Iran. The main themes of her research are oppression, gender, colonialism, and violence. Her works on political oppositions and nationalism from an archaeological viewpoint can be cited as pioneer works in Iran. Her works have been mostly published in scholarly anthropological and archaeological journals such as World Archaeology, Archaeologies, and International Journal of Historical Archaeology and also as chapters in edited volumes or as monographs in Persian and English.