Zahedan, Iran

Colorful buildings in the light industrial suburb southeast of town.

Seems Iran is having their own trouble with ISIS, which is either ironic (Iranic?), funny, or disturbing. I'm not sure which. The dateline on the story says Zahedan, Iran, which is 25 miles from the point where Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan all meet. When you look at the satellite image of most towns that are in the desert the terrain looks pretty bleak. But if you zoom in enough eventually you find evidence of water and some green crops. Not so here. Sand, rocks and buildings was all I could see. Then I notice these blue dots south of the airport. That's weird. What are they? Could they be swimming pools in a rich folk's enclave? Zoom in closer and I see that they are the brightly colored roofs of buildings, which strikes me as really weird. Even weirder than the US and Iran being on the same side. There are half a million people living here and the amount of irrigated cropland is miniscule.