Iranian Judicial System's Capacities in the Fight against Air Pollution

Despite passage of tens of years since the adoption of the first laws and regulations relating to air pollution in Iran which their first comprehensive instance was the Regulation of Prevention of Air Pollution of 1975 and the latest instance of them is the Clean Air Act of 2017, the air pollution problem in Iran is still serious. Persistence of this problem in Iran, is partly due to defect of laws and regulations and partly due to the poor performance of them by governmental organs. Nevertheless, the Iranian judicial institutions, as the last resort for supervision on the enforcement of laws and regulations, can play a key role in the fight against air pollution, especially if the available strengths and opportunities are appropriately used in this fight. In this article, we will, referring to Iran's laws and regulations and in an analytical way, explain these strengths and opportunities in the hope that: 1. negligence of these strengths by judicial institutions, and their doubts about the use of them in the fight against air pollution would be resolved, and 2. awareness of available opportunities and use of them by individuals and institutions involved in air pollution lawsuits would be increased.