IRAN: The Foreign Genies

Four centuries ago, Persia’s Shah Tahmasp looked on the sparkling waters of the Karun River on one side of the Zagros mountain range and at the parched and dusty land around Isfahan on the other side, and issued an imperial decree: let the waters of the Karun be brought to Isfahan so that Isfahan valley may bloom. Thousands of peasants chiseled into the mountainside to cut an aqueduct, but midway they hit a core of hard rock that dented even the Shah’s will. Work stopped.

Last week another Shah, 34-year-old Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, journeyed to Isfahan, Iran’s third city, to celebrate the completion of the project. Foreigners had come to the aid of the Iranians: Britain’s engineering firm of Sir Alexander Gibb and the U.S.’s Point Four Administration, which contributed $200,000 to complete the work in four years. Soon, Karun’s waters will flow through the mountains along a 9,000-ft. tunnel and spill over the thirsty Isfahan valley, irrigating 150,000 acres, and making a prosperous farmland out of desert.