Rare photos of major oil-producing region of Iran

Through a conquest of nature, the harnessing of fossil fuels, and the application of natural gas and oil resources to agriculture, Iranian and American developmentalists imagined a new form of society--the petrochemical paradise--born in the arid backwater of Khuzestan. While the program was a failure, it produced the conditions for future development ventures, setting the stage for the crisis of water management that currently afflicts the Khuzestan province.