Heavy Rain Causes Deadly Flooding Across Iran

Heavy rains in Iran that began Wednesday have set off flash floods and landslides in 21 of the country’s 31 provinces, killing at least 53 people, heavily damaging hundreds of villages, cutting off access to major roads and forcing the evacuation of an ancient city, officials say.

With the death toll expected to rise — at least 16 people are still missing — the flood is the deadliest water-related episode in a decade. The national crisis center said heavy rainstorms and flood risk would continue until Monday, and it issued a nationwide warning to stay away from riverbanks and valleys.

Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, placed governors nationwide on high alert and ordered the emergency relief agencies to prepare for the possibility that reservoirs and dams would overflow, official media reported.

The monsoon-like rains, unusual for the typical dry summer season in much of Iran and the Middle East, fit a pattern of unpredictable and extreme weather around the world.

“When it comes to the Middle East and climate change, we always tend to talk about drought and water shortage, but this is misleading,” said Kaveh Madani, an environmental scientist and water management expert at United Nations University in Germany. “Climate change can emerge as all sorts of extremes, including floods, landslides, wildfires and dust.”

Subway systems in the cities of Isfahan and Shiraz were shut down, and the governors asked residents to stay home. In Tehran, the capital, residents were urged to avoid unnecessary travel. Also in Tehran, the authorities closed a popular summer retreat in a palace complex in the foothills of the mountains, and banned hiking and dining on the trails and in the riverside cafes that dot the area.

The two major roads that connect Tehran to the northern Caspian Sea region were shut down as of early Saturday because of landslides and flood risks, local news media reported.

Mr. Madani said that weather forecasters had predicted heavy rains and flash floods in many parts of the country but those warnings had been mostly ignored by both officials and the population. Flooding is not uncommon in Iran, but what sets this episode apart, he said, was how widespread flooding occurred simultaneously in many parts of the country.

In the northern seaside province of Mazandaran, popular with tourists, the head of the local crisis center said three foreigners were among the dead and eight foreigners among the missing. Their nationalities were not specified.

Videos posted on social media and Iranian news sites showed harrowing scenes of water rushing into town centers and residential neighborhoods. Surging water collapsed walls, swallowed cars and drowned people as trapped onlookers cried for help, videos showed. In some areas, highways turned into lakes.

The ancient city of Yazd, a UNESCO heritage site with narrow labyrinth alleyways, brick-mud houses with domes and ancient cooling features known as wind catchers, suffered heavy infrastructure damage, and the historic section of the city was evacuated, local media reported. In an area near Yazd, video showed a flock of sheep being swept away by the floods.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society’s head of emergency operations, Mehdi Valipour, told state television on Friday that most of the casualties came from a suburb of Tehran, Imamzadeh Davood, a breezy town perched on a mountain that attracts summer pilgrims to its small religious shrine.

Some local officials and lawmakers said the level of destruction caused by the flooding was partly caused by the lack of timely warning and emergency preparedness training, as well as by unregulated development.

“A chain of mismanagement led to much higher destruction and the death of a number of our countrymen in the area of Imamzadeh Davoud and Kan,” Mohsen Pirhadi, a lawmaker and a member of the Parliament’s city management committee, said after visiting the area on Friday.

The United Arab Emirates has also experienced torrential, record-breaking rainfall in the past few days, with floods ravaging roads, shops and cars. The emirates of Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah and Fujairah are being hit the worst, with Fujairah seeing the largest rainfall in nearly three decades, according to local officials and media reports.

The U.A.E.’s interior minister said on Friday that seven Asian foreign nationals had died in the floods. At least 4,000 people had been evacuated to shelters, with many homes, businesses and livestock heavily damaged or destroyed, according to media reports.