THE GUARDIAN: Expediency council approves plan for new capital – which could be a new or existing city – amid earthquake fears over Tehran
It has witnessed some of Iran's most tumultuous events: the fall of the shah, the return of Ayatollah Khomeini and the transformation from pro-western monarchy to revolutionary Islamic republic.
Now Tehran's days as the Iranian capital appear numbered after a powerful state body approved a plan for a new principal city. The idea was proposed by the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and rubber-stamped by the expediency council.
Seismologists have warned that Tehran is liable to be struck by a catastrophic earthquake in the foreseeable future. It is not clear whether a new capital will be built from scratch or sited in an existing city.
Iran has had numerous capitals during its history, including Isfahan, Qazvin, Shiraz, Mashhad and Hamedan. Since the Qajar king Agha Mohammad Khan declared it capital in 1795, Tehran has become the country's political, social, economic and cultural centre.
Its infrastructure has been left creaking by rapid population growth that has seen it become home to 12 million people, up from 250,000 at the start of the 20th century.
A mass influx from the countryside under the last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fed the social discontent unleashed by the 1979 Islamic revolution. The population has continued to spiral since then, with unregulated development creating a traffic-clogged and polluted urban sprawl. >>> Robert Tait and Noushin Hoseiny | Sunday, November 01, 2009
