OT, but interesting…

The Death Spiral of the Islamic Republic

In the middle of the night, at 1:30 in the morning of Friday, August 14th, there was a large explosion at the monster petrochemical facility of the Iranian Pars Petrochemical Company in Bandar Assaluyeh. It is the biggest such plant in Iran, and the second largest in the whole Middle East (second only to one in Saudi Arabia).

The explosion, which took place in pipes carrying Liquid Petroleum Gas (which is mostly propane), caused fires throughout the facility. It took at least three hours before the fires were brought under control. At least two persons died (fortunately, at that hour personnel was at a minimum) and at least 30% of the plant was completely destroyed. Pars was forced to shut down the entire facility. Early estimates predicted it would remain closed for a month or two, and as of this writing it is still shut down.

The incident was almost certainly an act of sabotage by the regime’s enemies, and the whole story has been spiked. But the effects can be seen as far away as Tehran. Due to the chronic shortage of gasoline, many of the city’s 3500 buses and thousands of taxis had been converted to run on LPG. They were grounded after the attack on Pars, amounting to almost all of the two thousand LPG-run buses and, at a minimum, hundreds of taxis.

Very interesting.