A senior Iranian cleric from Isfahan, Iran, said “immorality” among young Iranian women, stemming from dressing “improperly,” is resulting in climate change and causing the rivers and dams in Iran to run dry.

During his weekly Friday sermon, Imam Seyyed Youssef Tabatabi-nejad said, “My office has received photos of women next to the dry Zayandeh-rud River pictured as if they are in Europe.” Tabatabi-nejad added, “It is these sorts of acts that cause the river to dry up even further,” according to the Iranian Student News Agency.

He added that “improper veiling” also contributed to this unnatural phenomenon. Just last month, the Iranian regime arrested eight Instagram models for “promoting immoral and un-Islamic culture and promiscuity” by appearing on the social media platform without wearing the mandatory hijab, a head covering that is often required under Islamic Sharia law.

The Islamic cleric’s comments arrive at a time when the regime is increasing its crackdown on youth for espousing Western values through their social media accounts and attire.

Tabatabi-nejad also called for Iran’s morality police to crack down on this “improper veiling” and urged Iran’s parliamentary Hezbollahi forces to “carry out operations to root out vice” in these women. (Iran’s Hezbollahi forces were created at the founding of the Iranian revolution to help the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in his quest to consolidate power. In their current capacity, they act as a sort of morality police force and an extension of the regime.)

Nik Kowsar, a writer, cartoonist and geologist who understands Iran’s water system and has also created several cartoons to illustrate the issue, explained to Breitbart News that approximately eight to ten percent of the waters in Iran’s dam reservoir “are being evaporated due to the warm climate in Iran and its been getting warmer in the last decade or so.”

He attributed this to an increase in the population and less population control over Iran’s new policies towards that. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah “Khamenei, years ago, announced that Iran needs more people,” Kowsar said. “He believed that Iran should have around 160 million citizens. By that, of course, he means he wants a more powerful country and in a way, yes, more Shiite soldiers.”

Kowsar discounted Imam Tabatabi-nejad’s comments pointing out that “you have enough women around the world who wear bikinis in front of oceans and rivers and they aren’t dried up. … The problem is you have a certain capacity for building dams in each region and when you overdo that and build too many dams, you eventually kill the river which is a live environment in a way.”

Several of his cartoons:









In 2010, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, a senior Iranian cleric, said women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to be blamed for earthquakes. “Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes,” he said.

Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter @AdelleNaz.