Iran The Hour of Doom

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan

According to the Holy Koran, the world will end not through fire or flood but by earthquake. "The earthquake of the Hour of Doom is a terrible thing," reads the Koran. Mothers will abandon their babies. Humankind will totter as if in a drunken stupor. There is no escape. The earth will give up its secrets. All good will be revealed. And all evil.

Notwithstanding the religious imagery, what characterized the first few hours after a savage temblor struck northern Iran last week was the stunning silence. Not until 7 a.m. or so, 6 1/2 hours after the quake, did Iran radio begin to report the damage suffered overnight in the fertile agricultural belt along the Caspian Sea. First accounts spoke of 50 dead, but the number soon mounted geometrically. By noon, it was 1,000; by evening, 10,000; by midnight, 25,000. By the next day, it was 45,000, plus 130,000 injured. There were fears that the final death toll might range beyond 50,000.

The rich Caspian agricultural provinces of Zanjan and Gilan cover 20,000 sq. mi. In one minute the earthquake, which measured as high as 7.7 on the Richter scale, turned scores of towns into wastelands of flattened houses and apartment buildings. Entire villages were reduced to rubble, their inhabitants buried beneath mountains of debris. Television film showed young men frantically trying to free victims from slides of dirt and the remains of homes. Women in black chadors clustered in town squares, fearful of returning home or lacking a home to return to. Children wept among the dead and the injured. Amid the debris lay abandoned toys, clothing and shoes.

In Gilan, 5,000 residents of the town of Roudbar were killed and the settlement was 90% ruined. In Zanjan, the provincial capital was reported to be completely destroyed, along with 54 towns and villages. Most of the victims were buried beneath concrete walls and ceilings as they slept. Aftershocks rippled through the area in the next 36 hours, including one that registered 6.5 on the Richter scale. Iran's Red Crescent Society indicated that at least 400,000 people in a region of 3.7 million had been left homeless. The country's location between two seismic zones has rendered it vulnerable to earthquakes. In 1968 one tremor killed 18,000 people. Ten years later, another killed 25,000.

After declaring three days of mourning, President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Iran's spiritual leader, the Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, flew to the area to supervise relief operations. Allocating $14 million from a strapped treasury for disaster relief, Ayatullah Khamenei described the catastrophe as a "divine test" and appealed to survivors to "pass this test with pride through patience, endeavor, cooperation."

Isolated from much of the world, largely on its own volition, Iran initially sought to prove its self-sufficiency. Tehran sent signals that foreign rescue workers and sniffer dogs were not wanted and, at first, forbade direct rescue flights from abroad. Soon, however, the extent of the destruction forced Iran to relent. Though it barred all aid from Israel and South Africa and refused to accept blood donations from any outsiders, Tehran asked for food, water tanks, electric generators and medical supplies, including blood plasma. The world responded immediately. Japan pledged relief funds and goods worth more than $1.5 million. Britain dispatched two planeloads of medicine, clothing and food. Even Iran's sworn enemy, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, offered condolences and support.

Tehran also accepted help from Washington, the Great Satan of its political vocabulary. A message, approved by George Bush but sent on behalf of the U.S. Government rather than the President personally, was dispatched via Switzerland to Rafsanjani. The Iranians quickly welcomed aid from "the American Red Cross or other such humanitarian organizations." Last week U.S. supplies were being loaded onto planes in Italy.

Could Iran's openness to aid signify a step toward detente with the world from which it has isolated itself? Probably not. The early demand that foreign rescue workers stay away may be another indication that the power struggle continues between moderates and radicals. There will be long-term economic repercussions from the earthquake. Still, revolution and war have inured Iran's people to death and devastation, and last week's natural disaster will not alter the hostility of Ayatullah Khomeini's devoted disciples toward the West. Only the passage of time, accompanied by calamities natural and economic, seems likely to moderate those policies.

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Cairo and William Mader/London