How beautiful is my blooming Shiraz!
May God Almighty protect it!
Come to Shiraz and see it:
Everyone who lives in it is perfect.
These lines of the great Persian poet Saadi Shirazi, dedicated to the former capital of the Parthian Empire, became a kind of epigraph to the visit of the delegation of St. Petersburg Mining University to Shiraz University. And despite the opponent in the person of Sergey Yesenin, who wrote "No matter how beautiful Shiraz is, it is no better than the Ryazan expanses", in fact, the city, which is over 3,000 years old, is really beautiful.
The only thing that spoils it is the insane car traffic, compared to which St. Petersburg and Moscow traffic jams are deserted highways. As a rule, each Iranian family has two cars. One of them must be locally made. There are more women than men behind the wheel. Except in headscarves. But that's just a dress code. There is no question of any discrimination, given the number of female representatives of the fair sex occupying leading positions in government bodies. Neither are harems.
And the Hollywood and news "coloring" of Persians as an extremely aggressive nation is broken from the first minutes by their smiling faces and extraordinary cordiality towards the guests. Here, by the way, with not the most positive attitude to the United States, even such films as "300 Spartans" with the original image of the fighter against the Greek "democracy" Xerxes, are shown in theaters. As movie comedies.
And this is a lifetime portrait.
And this is a reaction to the Mining delegation in uniform:
Shiraz is a kind of symbol of Iranians' resistance to Western sanctions. It is here that the country's national saying "If tomorrow we were to be enclosed by a concrete wall, we would still survive in our blossoming garden" came into being.
Interestingly, Josep Borrell is not the author of the maxim about Europe as a flowering garden. This comparison was first heard in Ayatollah Khomeini's message to Mikhail Gorbachev on January 1, 1989:
"Of course, the wrong methods and erroneous actions of the former communist leaders in the field of economy led to the fact that the flowering garden of the West appeared to you and fascinated you, but know that the truth is not there. If you wish at this stage to unravel only the tangle of the economic problems of socialism and communism, turning for this purpose to the centers of capitalism in the West, you will not only fail to cure your society of its ills, but you will come to the point where others will be forced to correct your mistakes, for if Marxism has now reached a dead end in its economic problems, the Western world is mired in the same problems, only in a different form and in other spheres. I urge you to make sure that by destroying the building of Marxist illusions you do not become a prisoner of the West and the Big Devil".
The general secretary's reply to the spiritual leader of the Islamic revolution was in the style of Vladimir Vysotsky:
"We have every second in Turkmenistan, both Ayatollah and Khomeini".
History puts everything in its place. And it always demonstrates the priority of wisdom over emotions. And today Russian engineers are going to Iran to understand how the country, which has been under severe Western sanctions for forty years, not only survives, but is more than successful in the market of creating its own independent industry, producing literally everything except bananas, and its own education system, oriented, above all, on strengthening sovereignty.
Meet Shiraz University. It is relatively young - it was founded on the basis of a college in 1946. According to world rankings, it is among the top three universities in the country. The campus is 3,000 hectares. 17,000 students. 700 faculty members. 19 faculties, 76 departments, 430 specialties. From humanities and medical disciplines to nuclear physics, IT and artificial intelligence. From nano- and biotechnology to optoelectronics. From cyber security to veterinary medicine. Special attention is paid to oil and gas and mining.
Iranian subsoil contains seven percent of the world's mineral resources. The total value of proven reserves is 770 billion dollars.
Reference: Today Iran is among the world's leading oil producing countries. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2022, as of 2021 Iran's oil production was 167.7 million tons. (By comparison, the Russian Federation - 536.4 million tons, Saudi Arabia - 515 million tons, UAE - 164.4 million tons, Iraq - 200.8 million tons). Iran ranks third in the world in terms of natural gas production (256.7 billion cubic meters), behind only the Russian Federation (701.7 billion cubic meters) and the United States (934.2 billion cubic meters).
Before the trip, the miners had a traditional brainstorming session, where each of the 18 members of the delegation outlined their own work program. The head of the delegation, Marat Rudakov, director of the Institute of Targeted Educational Programs at the St. Petersburg university, made a report on the situation with the country's natural resources.
"Both in the Russian Federation, according to the federal law "On Subsoil" and in Iran, subsoil and the minerals contained therein are state property. Also, the legislation of both countries determines that extracted minerals, specific mineral resources can be in both public and private ownership", - said Marat Rudakov.
As for natural gas production, the situation is somewhat different. In Iran, for example, this is the prerogative of exclusively state-owned companies. Private companies there are allowed only to manufacture equipment and components, service and repair work at the fields. In Russia, along with Gazprom, whose controlling stake belongs to the state, Novatek is also present on the market.
Oil production and refining in the Islamic Republic is also almost entirely carried out by state-owned companies, such as the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and its subsidiaries - National Iranian South Oil Company (NISOC), Arvandan, Iranian Offshore Oil Company (IOOC) and a number of others. Private companies account for no more than 1-2% of liquid hydrocarbons production, and they must sell all the oil they produce to the state - this obligation is established for them at the legislative level. Such business rules allow official Tehran to concentrate in its hands the financial resources received from the sale of minerals, as well as from their refined products.
This sector is controlled by the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC) and its subsidiaries. The flagship is the Abadan refinery, one of the largest in the world, with a capacity of 420,000 barrels of oil per day. It should be noted that the Government of Iran is implementing a strategy for the development of the industry for 2021-2026, according to which by the end of the current five-year period the volume of black gold refining should reach about 3 million barrels per day.
The interest in obtaining export revenues from the sale abroad of natural gas, oil and oil products, as well as their high demand from a number of neighboring countries, prompted Iran to intensively develop pipeline transport.
The largest consumers of methane produced in the Islamic Republic are Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Tajikistan. In addition, Tehran has its own tanker fleet capable of transporting the volume of oil demanded by its partners, primarily China, the main buyer of oil. The U.S. is making tremendous efforts to change the state of affairs, but it is unable to prevent it.
The parallels with Russian realities are obvious. But, of course, they are manifested not only in the example of the functioning of the mineral and raw materials complex.
"The mission of technical universities in Iran is to educate personnel for the industry of their country. St. Petersburg Mining University is engaged in solving a similar task, especially now, within the framework of the pilot project to improve the structure of higher engineering education in Russia. Our common goal is to preserve the continuity of generations in the real sector of the national economy, in production, which shows great prospects for our mutually beneficial cooperation", - Marat Rudakov is sure.
Despite the sanctions pressure, students' education and scientific research in the Islamic Republic are carried out with modern equipment. For example, the oil research laboratory at the Faculty of Oil and Gas uses instruments of the famous French company "VINCI". They are purchased through third countries, the same China. It is more expensive, but according to the university management, it is worth it.
However, there are also serious developments of their own. Industrial enterprises commissioned by the university are improving devices left over from the times of the Shah, when even teaching here was conducted exclusively in English. As for cooperation with Russia, one very significant example can be given. Shiraz University has a continuous near-sonic wind tunnel. It is a 0.9 by 0.9 meter test section. This is where the development, calibration and production of air data sensors takes place. The Mach number is 0.4 to 1.2.
Behind these numbers is a test center for combat drones, in the production of which Iran is the undisputed leader. It is at Shiraz University that their full scientific development is being carried out, and today the university's specialists are involved in the creation of a center for controlling drones in the Russian Federation. In return, our Defense Ministry is helping the university to work on space technologies and rocket engineering. In particular, they are working on guidance systems similar to those used in our S-400 systems.
Better late than never. The 40-year anti-Iran sanctions have given the country invaluable experience of survival and understanding of the extreme demand for engineering education. In this respect, Iran has a lot to learn from. Of course, we also have a lot to teach our future partners. After all, Russia's technological development is at a higher level in a number of areas.
"Together we are stronger". This position is shared by Vladimir Litvinenko, Rector of Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University, and Mohammad Moazeni, Rector of Shiraz University.
The work of the Mining University delegation lasted for a week. The issues of educational standards and scientific approaches were studied in detail, several joint seminars were held, and points of contact with ministries and industrial enterprises specialized in miners and oilmen were identified. This will be discussed in several upcoming articles.