I saw news of this in the Independent and have looked up the paper: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL114853

Although not associated with active volcanism, there is in fact a subduction zone under Iran, due to the underthrusting of the colliding Arabian Plate, extending eastwards from the straits of Hormuz. I was intrigued by this, having lived in the Persian Gulf for some years in the 1980s and having always wondered a bit about the geology.

It seems the volcano summit is rising, but they attribute this to shallow depth hydrothermal activity, which could presage some kind of phreatic event, though no one is yet suggesting a lava eruption is imminent.

According to this paper the last definite eruption was ~700,000 yrs ago, though I notice the Wiki entry on this volcano is rather self-contradictory, at one point suggesting eruptions in recent years but then seeming to say there is no evidence for that after all.

It's an intriguing area and not well known to us Westerners. There are even salt glaciers(!) in the Zagros mountains of Iran.

Edited October 23Oct 23 by exchemist

To be honest, I think this paper is more about publicising their satellite radar filtering techniques than notification of any serious imminent hazard. The ballpark figures for ground deformation are a little on the tame side. Compare and contrast the current deformation rates around Pozzuoli (Phlegrean Fields west of Naples). They are a bit scary.

Phlegrean Fields

Edited October 24Oct 24 by sethoflagos
Balls up

Doesn't it make sense, though, that as the Earth warms and ice on land melts and flows into oceans the shift in weight distribution will cause tectonic plates to move more than the would otherwise, causing things like more severe and frequent earthquakes and volcanoes?

5 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

To be honest, I think this paper is more about publicising their satellite radar filtering techniques than notification of any serious imminent hazard. The ballpark figures for ground deformation are a little on the tame side. Compare and contrast the current deformation rates around Pozzuoli (Phlegrean Fields west of Naples). They are a bit scary.

Phlegrean Fields

Yes I think you are right. I was partly suckered by the angle on this taken by the newspaper report. It is indeed mainly about their measurement technique. But I had no idea there are volcanoes in that part of the world, so I found it interesting.

Agree too about Pozzuoli and the Phlegraean Fields. I gather Solfatara is now out of bounds. I visited it back in the 1970s.

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

Agree too about Pozzuoli and the Phlegraean Fields. I gather Solfatara is now out of bounds. I visited it back in the 1970s.

Ha! How deftly you shame my AmericaniSed spelling disorder! (I'm blaming the auto spelling 'correction' tool)

Yes, I took the kids there in the late '90s, and we all pulled faces at the smell of the fumaroles, and a little later, gazed down into the depths of the Vesuvius crater. But when I ask them now what they remember, it's mainly what proper Neapolitan pizzas should taste like.

4 hours ago, npts2020 said:

Doesn't it make sense, though, that as the Earth warms and ice on land melts and flows into oceans the shift in weight distribution will cause tectonic plates to move more than the would otherwise, causing things like more severe and frequent earthquakes and volcanoes?

This particular system began its current trajectory in the late Mesozoic. It saw the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) come and go. The current climate trend will have some impact on local erosion rates one way or another, but the overall tectonic path is controlled by far greater forces.