Disaster struck Iran again. On Wednesday, a cargo train loaded with fuel, fertilizers and other nasty chemicals went off tracks at a rail station near the city of Neyshabur leading to a giant explosion shortly afterwards. The official death toll runs around 320 with another 460 injured. The second saddest thing to the incident itself in every such disaster is the public apathy and complacency that follows.

There always seems to be a justification or some simple-minded reasoning that tends to deflect people's minds from scrutiny into the root cause of the incident and holding someone or some agency responsible. Earthquakes, of course, are a natural disaster—an "act of god." What can we do about nature? Planes crash because of US embargo—all those big aerospace companies that are denying us spare parts or new planes. It is totally out of our hands! But no one seriously asks who authorized those flimsy brick houses (tombs, better to call them) to sprawl in a proven earthquake-prone region or who cleared those ailing aircrafts to fly without proper maintenance? As if poor decision making or mismanagement never played any role in the loss of innocent life in these supposedly out-of-our-control disasters.

But this time it is a fatal train explosion that needs explanation. Lets think about it for a moment. A chain of wagons loaded with fuel and fertilizer—the same combustible recipe that blasted the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 and took the lives of 168 people in the worst pre-911 act of terrorism in the American history—moving through a populated residential area in Iran, apparently without proper safety measures in place. Which "dark forces&" are to blame for this one? Even if those ill-fated firefighters (and bystanders) had been informed of the contents of the train soon enough, so many people would not be gathering around the wreckage after the initial derailment and the human toll would not have been so high. Who is really responsible for these senseless losses of life? Iran is posed to inaugurate its ambitious nuclear energy program within the next few years. Who is then going to take responsibility for the safe transport of radioactive material around the country?

Let me be clear on one thing: I am not a die-hard fan of western-style democratization of the developing world, nor I buy all those hooplas about how perfect the American democracy is. But if there is one good thing about democratic societies, it is their core concept of accountability. Meaning that people have the tools to freely scrutinize, disapprove, confront, challenge, hold responsible or impeach their public officials for the decisions that they make, especially when those decisions affect public safety and security. In that sense, it may not be an exaggeration to claim that today in Iran more ordinary people silently fall victim to the lack of democracy, than those who bluntly shout for it on the streets.