TEHRAN, Iran — The long, cool shadows of the old sycamore trees on the stretch between Tehran’s downtown Valiasr Intersection and Valiasr Square are disappearing fast. There are very few sycamores left at irregular intervals on each side of the street. The ones that are still there have few leaves and an ugly appearance.

On June 12, the website Nazar News published pictures of 15 more sycamore trees being cut down. However, the mayor of Tehran’s 6th District, Azim Babaei, told Azad News Agency, “Aside from the trees that were destroyed by the [recent] storm, no other tree has been cut down deliberately. Only a few trees have been cut down due to the problems they created for residents.”

Storeowners in the area disagree. Yaghoub, who has run a business on the famed section of Valiasr Street for the past 20 years, told Al-Monitor, “They always try to justify what they do in the name of the people. … How can a tree create problems? The problem lies somewhere else. The 6th District is the most commercial area of Tehran and the mayor wants to sell construction permits so that he can earn more money … and these sycamore trees are blocking the way.”

Valiasr Street is the longest in Tehran — and Iran — with a length of 18 kilometers (11 miles). Connecting the south of the capital to its north, it was constructed in 1939 by the orders of Reza Shah, the father of Iran’s last monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Although the original order was for about 60,000 sycamore trees to be planted alongside Valiasr Street, this number has dropped dramatically over the past two decades. The government-owned newspaper Iran said in its Aug. 7, 2002, issue that only 11,500 trees are left. Nine years later, the number was recorded in the Valiasr Street registry as just above 8,000.