As the dams feeding Tehran run dry, Iran struggles with a dire water crisis

4 hours ago 2

Tehran, Iran – Authorities are scrambling to supply drinking h2o crossed Iran, peculiarly successful the capital, Tehran, arsenic Iranians grapple with the effects of aggregate ongoing crises.

If determination is nary rainfall by adjacent month, h2o volition person to beryllium rationed successful Tehran; successful fact, the metropolis of 10 cardinal whitethorn adjacent person to beryllium evacuated, President Masoud Pezeshkian said successful a code connected Friday.

Dry spells everywhere

Iran is present grappling with its sixth consecutive twelvemonth of drought, portion heatwaves pushed temperatures supra 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) during the summer.

The past h2o year, ending successful precocious September 2025, was 1 of the driest connected record, with the existent twelvemonth shaping up to beryllium worse, with Iran receiving lone 2.3mm (0.09 inches) of precipitation by aboriginal November, down by 81 percent compared with the humanities mean of the aforesaid period, the Meteorological Organization said.

A whopping 19 dams – up from 9 3 weeks agone – are connected the verge of drying out, filled to little than 5 percent capacity. Dozens of others are not faring overmuch better, according to information from the Water Resources Management Company.

Most of the 5 major dams feeding Tehran from adjacent upland ranges, the Lar, Latyan, Karaj (Amir Kabir), Taleqan and Mamloo Dams, are astatine highly debased capacity, with an mean of astir 10 percent capacity.

A swimmer went viral past week with a video from the Karaj reservoir, showing that the h2o level was truthful debased that helium could locomotion successful parts of it.

No betterment successful sight

All eyes are connected the skies arsenic authorities are near with precise constricted options.

Farshid Vahedifard, prof of civilian and biology engineering astatine Tufts University, said the concern volition deteriorate unless the state receives important rainfall and snowfall successful captious regions.

“Otherwise, the quality toll, some economical and social, volition beryllium severe,” helium told Al Jazeera.

“Water scarcity is already fueling section tensions and protests, which could escalate into broader societal conflict, particularly arsenic large economical hardships [rising inflation, unemployment, lodging issues, and the precocious outgo of living] further erode people’s capableness to cope.”

Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi told reporters connected Saturday that the authorities volition imminently commencement rationing water, adjacent afloat shutting it disconnected astatine nighttime crossed the state if necessary.

Even earlier the announcement, radical online and immoderate media reported that h2o stopped astatine nighttime successful Tehran. Millions suffered the effects of unannounced water cut-offs during the summer, arsenic well.

Aliabadi blamed immoderate of the strain connected infrastructure harm from the 12-day warfare with Israel successful June and said high-consuming municipality users volition beryllium penalised. He urged radical to bargain h2o retention tanks.

Authorities person agelong enactment the onus connected people, urging them to devour less. But adjacent if Iranians trim usage by 20 percent, arsenic authorities demand, household depletion is believed to beryllium little than 8 percent of each use, astir each the remainder going to agriculture.

Local newspapers this week offered a premix of disapproval and despair.

The mean Etemad paper said “unqualified” managers successful cardinal positions are a basal origin of the issue, portion reformist regular Shargh wrote that the situation is being “sacrificed for the involvement of politics”.

Radical betterment implausible

Iran is acold from the lone state successful the region, oregon the world, feeling the ramifications of a warming climate. But it is doing worse than astir large countries successful the region.

Kaveh Madani, manager of the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and a erstwhile lawman caput of Iran’s Department of Environment, said that contempt Iran not being a water-rich nation, a premix of atrocious management, deficiency of foresight and overreliance connected exertion created a cognition of h2o availability.

“For example, Tehran is simply a adust place, but you support bringing h2o to it, gathering dams, reasoning you tin ever proviso much h2o to it,” Madani said, adding that, arsenic a result, Iran is present “water bankrupt” – among different things.

“We are not lone seeing h2o bankruptcy … but besides vigor bankruptcy, earthy state bankruptcy … All of these are signals that archer america however constricted assets maturation is.

“But I deliberation with the archetypal rainfall oregon flood, radical could hide astir the situation,” helium told Al Jazeera.

The archetypal clip Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publically called connected Iranians to devour little h2o was astir 15 years ago.

But things person gotten chronically worse since, and nary government, reformist, mean oregon hardline, has managed to ward disconnected h2o insecurity arsenic Iran pursued improvement with small respect to sustainability.

Six years of drought tin paralyse immoderate nation, but this does not warrant the existent deficiency of h2o resilience, Madani said, adding that Iran could usage this play of absorption connected h2o to instrumentality meaningful change, which would necessitate semipermanent policies that bash not output results successful the abbreviated run.

“So it requires a existent patriot to beryllium consenting to beryllium crucified by the wide nationalist but bring a corporate triumph for Iranians successful the agelong term. I don’t deliberation that idiosyncratic presently exists, and the things we spot successful Iran don’t marque a extremist betterment plausible.”

Self-sufficiency, astatine what cost?

Iranian instrumentality stipulates that 85 percent of home nutrient beryllium produced locally, Morad Kaviani, prof of geography and hydropolitics astatine Iran’s Kharazmi University, told authorities tv past week.

However, helium added, Iran does not person the h2o and ungraded capacities, and astir 30 percent of cultivation nutrient is wasted owed to a deficiency of infrastructure, outdated irrigation practices and misguided harvest selection.

Modernisation and accelerated concern maturation were straining h2o resources earlier the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the cultivation self-sufficiency argumentation that came aft made things worse.

More than 90 percent of Iran’s h2o proviso is devoted to agriculture, which lone accounted for astir 12 percent of Iran’s GDP and astir 14 percent of employment successful the Iranian calendar twelvemonth that ended successful March 2025, according to the Statistical Center of Iran.

But radical moving successful the comparatively tiny assemblage are besides suffering arsenic h2o sources rapidly adust up.

Post-revolution governments, often done the operation limb of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), built hundreds of dams and wells, over-interfering with rivers, portion galore reservoirs sat partially empty.

Authorities person been tapping groundwater reserves astatine unchecked rates, too, starring to wide onshore sinking and ecosystem illness successful areas similar Isfahan successful cardinal Iran and Sistan and Baluchestan to the southeast.

Tehran and galore different cities person outgrown their supplies, forcing reliance connected h2o transfers from distant aquifers via outdated infrastructure.

Iran is besides incapable to pull overseas concern to prevention its ailing infrastructure owed to the devastating sanctions for years that person been successful spot for years.

Under the sanctions, Iran cannot diversify modes of employment successful agrarian areas wherever astir radical prosecute successful water-intensive agriculture, forcing continued h2o allocation to agriculture retired of fearfulness that threatening those workplace jobs could origin protests and adjacent make a nationalist information risk, the UN university’s Madani said.

Decades of mismanagement

About a 3rd of each h2o successful Iran is wasted oregon spent without yielding returns, authorities media cited the Water and Wastewater Company of Iran arsenic saying successful precocious September.

That includes astir 15 percent successful carnal losses, and much than 16 percent classified arsenic amerciable consumption, escaped nationalist use, and metre error.

Vahedifard, the professor, pointed retired that the authorities has launched short-term measures specified arsenic desalination and inter-basin transfers, but the h2o strategy is already successful “an astir unrecoverable state” aft decades of mismanagement and ignored warnings by experts.

“Planning indispensable present absorption connected managing the world of scarcity … shifting from supply-oriented engineering to resilience-based management, centred connected groundwater recharge and aquifer restoration,” Vahedifard said, adding that Iran besides needs infrastructure investment, transparent information sharing, integrated water–energy–agriculture planning, and genuine assemblage participation.

He said antithetic communities crossed Iran look antithetic hazard thresholds based connected socioeconomic and biology conditions, and determination are heavy disparities betwixt municipality and agrarian areas and cardinal and peripheral provinces successful presumption of being prioritised successful nationalist h2o and infrastructure policies.

“Ultimately, equitable h2o absorption is not conscionable astir fairness,” helium said. “It’s cardinal to Iran’s biology stableness and societal cohesion.”

Read Entire Article