It is an irony that on this occasion an earthquake whose epicenter was in Iran has wreaked havoc in neighboring Pakistan. The shockwaves were felt around the Gulf,  including in Eastern Province, yet relatively little damage appears to have been done in Iran itself, because it occurred in a remote and uninhabited part of the country.



The greatest impact of the 7.8 magnitude quake, which is the worst to hit Iran in over half a century, was felt in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, where whole communities were flattened by the ferocity of the ground movement. Initial reports are of at least 35 deaths. However, as is the way of things, when Pakistani troops reach remoter communities, cut off by rockfalls and landslides, the death toll is likely to prove higher.



The significance of this event however rests in what happened just a week ago. It was then that another quake in Iran, near Bushehir caused 37 deaths and injured as many as a thousands of people. Bushehir is the site of Iran’s Russian built nuclear reactor, from which it has been taking fuel for enrichment, for what it continues to insist is its entirely peaceful nuclear program. Now the Russians endorse statements from the government in Tehran insisting that the plant has not been damaged in any way by the violent tremors of April 10.  The quake that struck the area was 6.3 on the Richter scale, while Tuesday’s disaster was 180 times more powerful.



Yet comparing the magnitude of quakes, using the apparently minor incremental variations of the Richter Scale, is actually not the point.



The fact is that Iran is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. Is it wise that it should have any nuclear power plants at all? Is it really possible to build a nuclear power station in such a way that if the quake that hit it last week had been as powerful as Tuesday’s, it would have survived and there would have been no deadly leak of radiation?



The methodical and careful Japanese thought that they had all bases covered at the Fukushima power plants.  As the terrible tsunami of just over a year ago proved, they were completely wrong. Indeed, there had long been a movement in Japan, another country with a long history of devastating quakes, which argued that nuclear plants should never have been built in the first place. After the Fukushima disaster, that lobby assumed that it was pushing against an open door. However,  because of Japan’s limited power generation options and the expense of building and fueling hydrocarbon-burning alternatives, it now looks as if the Japanese are going to keep their nuclear power generation plants.



This does not mean however that Iran is wise to follow the same course. If the country is indeed enriching uranium to fuel modern reactors, and not to start amassing a nuclear arsenal, then the question has to be, how wise is it to build more plants in addition to Bushehir? Thus, even leaving aside the atomic weapons issue, there is a strong argument that the Iranians are playing with fire with their nuclear program. A smashed and crippled nuclear reactor in Iran would pose a devastating risk to other countries in the region, to say nothing of the Iranians themselves. On this basis alone, it is time for Tehran to reconsider.