An Iranian general on Monday accused Israel of manipulating the weather to prevent rain over the Islamic Republic, alleging his country was the victim of cloud “theft,” Newsweek reported.

“The changing climate in Iran is suspect,” Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization, said during an agricultural conference in Tehran. “Foreign interference is suspected to have played a role in climate change,” Jalali was quoted as saying, insisting results from an Iranian scientific study “confirm” the claim.

The general implied that the Jewish State and another unnamed country were secretly conspiring to extract the moisture out of clouds due to pass over Iran. “Israel and another country in the region have joint teams which work to ensure clouds entering Iranian skies are unable to release rain,” Jalali charged.

“On top of that, we are facing the issue of cloud and snow theft”, Jalali added, citing a survey showing that all highlands exceeding roughly 7,200 feet extending from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean have received snowfall, except for Iran.

Jalali’s claims, however, were immediately contradicted by Ahad Vazife, the director general of the Weather Forecast and Early Warning Office at the official Iran Meteorological Organization.

General Jalali perhaps has “documents in this regard, and I’m not in the pipeline, but based on meteorological information, there is no possibility that a country will steal snow or clouds,” Vazife told the Iranian Students’ News Agency.

“Iran has suffered a prolonged drought, and this is a global trend that does not apply only to Iran,” Vazife said. “Raising such questions not only does not solve any of our problems, but will deter us from finding the right solutions”, he added.

Jalali’s allegations of weather manipulation were not the first time an Iranian official has accused the country’s enemies of stealing its rain. The conspiracy theory was previously voiced by former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said during a 2012 speech that Iran’s growing drought was “partly unintentional due to industry and partly intentional, as a result of the enemy destroying the clouds moving towards our country and this is a war that Iran is going to overcome.”

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to share water-saving technologies with the Iranian people, who he said were the “victims of a cruel and tyrannical regime that denies them vital water.” In order to help Iranians, Netanyahu announced the launch of a Farsi-language website with instructions on how to extend their water resources.

In The Slow Destruction of Iran’s Water Supply, which was published in the March 2017 issue of The Tower Magazine, Nik Kowsar, detailed how Iran’s rulers ruined the country’s water supply and described how he was ostracized and forced to flee for criticizing those policies.

[Photo: Tasnim News ]