The Ayatollah smiles on the sturgeon

Press, 4 October 1984, Page 20

The Ayatollah smiles on the sturgeon

By

JUAN CARLOS GUMUCIO,

of the Associated Press, in Iran

After more than a century of trade disputes with Russia and years of United States commercial sanctions, the famous Iranian caviar is emerging as a revolutionary product that nobody turns down.

The round, blue caviar can bearing an Islamic sun shining over the Caspian Sea has established itself among the world’s luxury commodities.

Historically, Russian caviar had been the most prized, but in recent decades, pollution and industrial activity on the Soviet side of the Caspian Sea has pushed the healthiest caviar-bearing sturgeon fish south to Iranian waters. The Russians used to buy much of their caviar from Iran and then can it

under a Soviet label, but no more. After the 1979 overthrow of the Shah, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeiny banned caviar as a symbol of the previous regime’s Western decadence. Today caviar is no longer an Islamic taboo. The Ayatollah recently lifted a religious ban on the soft-boned fish and its golden eggs. Iranians now eat the tiny eggs as a morning snack, washing them down with tea and drops of lemon. Caviar is also giving a solid image of Islamic enterprise to the world’s caviar buyers, who are said to be abiding by revolutionary Iran’s new trade regulations. Record exports of 130 tons so far this year have produced estim-

ated revenues of about SUS3O million (SNZ6O million). In spite of a United States freeze on importing Iranian goods, Iranian caviar flows to restaurants in America through intermediaries. “The demand has never dropped one single point,” said Mr Moradi.

A research centre and huge fish farming installations in the outskirts of the city of Rasht are breeding millions of baby sturgeon every year.

Born in laboratories and kept in special pools until they are slightly bigger than a match-stick, the sturgeon are released to the quiet Sefid-Rud River, where they live until they are big enough to swim into the Caspian Sea.