RFERL:

Zadhoush wants the new country, Qom, to have its own flag, borders and constitutional law. He also called on the international community to recognize Qom and send their ambassadors to the new state.

However, Zadhoush who is aware that Qom, a dust-covered town between a salt lake and a dried out river, has little resource to subsist on, demanded that Tehran lend “a few sources of income such as oil refineries and petrochemical plants” to the independent Qom to make the Islamic Vatican economically viable.

Currently, the major sources of income for Qom, the venue of one of the world’s two major Shiite seminaries, are the pilgrims that visit the holy shrine of Hazrat Masoumeh, the sister of Imam Reza, the only Shiite imam buried in Iran, and the confectionary workshops that sell sugar candies to the pilgrims.

Iranian officials, who normally frown at any call for cessation and respond to such calls heavy-handedly, simply ignored Zadhoush and his idea. The public also took his comment light-heartedly, welcoming the idea of sending all the mullahs to Qom as non-oil export.

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