TEHRAN: Iranian authorities ordered many government offices to close on Wednesday in a bid to cut power consumption as a heatwave strains generating capacity, state media reported.
At least 15 of Iran's 31 provinces will see public offices either shut or operating on reduced hours, the official IRNA news agency said.
Provinces affected include West Azerbaijan and Ardabil in the northwest, Hormozgan in the south, and Alborz in the north, as well as the capital Tehran.
Tehran governor Mohammad Sadegh Motamedian said the closures came at the request of the energy ministry and were intended to "manage energy consumption in the water and electricity sectors", state television said.
Emergency and frontline services will remain open, it added.
Elevated temperatures that began in mid-July have strained Iran's power grid, prompting rolling blackouts nationwide as temperatures topped 50C in the south.
Authorities in Tehran have also reduced mains water pressure to manage falling reservoir levels, as the country endures what Iranian media have described as the worst drought in a century.
Iran orders office closures as heatwave strains power grid
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Iran orders office closures as heatwave strains power grid
- Temperatures topped 50C in the south
Syria Kurds chief says ‘all efforts’ being made to salvage deal with Damascus
- Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal
- The two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism
DAMASCUS: Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said Thursday that “all efforts” were being made to prevent the collapse of talks on an agreement with Damascus to integrate his forces into the central government.
The remarks came days after Aleppo saw deadly clashes between the two sides before their respective leaders ordered a ceasefire.
In March, Abdi signed a deal with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa to merge the Kurds’ semi-autonomous administration into the government by year’s end, but differences have held up its implementation.
Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal, adding in a statement that the two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism, and pledging further meetings with Damascus.
Downplaying the year-end deadline, he said the deal “did not specify a time limit for its ending or for the return to military solutions.”
He added that “all efforts are being made to prevent the collapse of this process” and that he considered failure unlikely.
Abdi also repeated the SDF’s demand for decentralization, which has been rejected by Syria’s Islamist authorities, who took power after ousting longtime ruler Bashar Assad last year.
Turkiye, an important ally of Syria’s new leaders, sees the presence of Kurdish forces on its border as a security threat.
In Damascus this week, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stressed the importance of the Kurds’ integration, having warned the week before that patience with the SDF “is running out.”
The SDF control large swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, and with the support of a US-led international coalition, were integral to the territorial defeat of the Daesh group in Syria in 2019.
Syria last month joined the anti-IS coalition and has announced operations against the jihadist group in recent days.
