Earlier this month, Iranian officials warned that Tehran could run out of drinking water within two weeks due to a historic drought. In the past year, the country’s average annual rainfall has dropped to 45 percent below normal, and nineteen of its thirty-one provinces are in a severe drought. The dams and reservoirs that supply the capital have dried up and are operating at minimal capacity, with some at only 5 percent of reserve capacity. Fears of an emergency evacuation of the capital are mounting, and taps are running dry.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian have both publicly acknowledged the severity and seriousness of a crisis that has been years in the making. But without addressing the root causes, any mitigation efforts will likely fall short—setting Iran up as an example for its neighbors and others facing water crises of their own.
A Long-Building Crisis
For Iran, the water scarcity crisis is a cruel irony, given the country had pioneered water management systems—known as the qanat or karez—millennia ago. During the past several decades, it abandoned and replaced the qanat with wells, aquifers, and other modern systems that were less efficient or environmentally friendly. Since the early 2000s (if not before), and despite constructing hundreds of dams and reservoirs to create a more consistent water supply, the state faced a worsening crisis, with the annual groundwater availability, storage, and recharge steadily declining.
The crisis is also the byproduct of factors such as population growth, rising demand, resource exploitation, and uneven distribution—many of which are aggravated by climate change and prolonged drought. Government mismanagement and corruption also contributed: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s dam-building firm, Sepasad, was one of several companies that prioritized political power and predatory profit-seeking over water preservation, ecological protection, and public prosperity. Some in Iran refer to Sepasad and its collaborators as the “water mafia.”
Starting in the 2010s, Iranian and UN officials openly declared the situation a crisis. In July 2013, the former Minister of Agriculture Isa Kalantari famously stated that the shrinking water supply constituted a bigger threat to Iran than its external enemies or elite infighting and could cause the country to become uninhabitable in the future. An ongoing symptom and symbol of the crisis was Lake Urmia in northwest Iran: Once among the world’s largest saltwater lakes, Urmia was steadily shrinking, in spite of a decade of restoration efforts.
In Tehran, the crisis is particularly acute: Last year, rainfall totals dropped 42 percent below the long-term average, at the same time as the capital set records for water consumption. The city and province are in the midst of a five-year drought, when in the past, two dry years had been followed by a wet one.
The Impacts
In July, Pezeshkian cautioned that the crisis could compel Tehran’s 15 million residents to flee. But in the northern and wealthier part of the city, adequate infrastructure, advanced distribution, and augmented storage made the crisis less pressing—while also demonstrating the socioeconomic disparities at play. Many of these residents aggravated the crisis by consuming up to ten times more water than the average household, primarily for private uses such as bathing, washing cars, and watering gardens.
During the past two decades, if not earlier, the crisis adversely affected agricultural production and accelerated migration from rural areas to cities. In Tehran and other urban centers, these trends strained infrastructure and services, expanded slums, and exacerbated environmental problems and health risks such as traffic congestion and air pollution—all of which increased socioeconomic instability.
The crisis also contributed to several large protests, including some in Isfahan and Khuzestan in 2018, 2021, and 2025 that were specifically triggered by water scarcity. Domestic discontent was particularly prevalent in the marginalized and underdeveloped provinces such as Khuzestan that are located along the ethnic-minority periphery along Iran’s borders. They were disproportionately impacted due in part to the state diverting the area’s water supply to more privileged and prosperous provinces in Iran’s Persian-majority center to compensate for their water deficits.
In July, when an Iranian academic announced the apocalyptic scenario that a national drinking water shortage was weeks away, she identified the lack of institutional coordination at the state level as impeding a solution. A survey conducted in September found that 75 percent of Iranians blamed the crisis on mismanagement and inefficiency instead of natural factors and economic sanctions.
Temporary Solutions for a Long-Term Problem
To date, the state mainly has attempted to manage the crisis by implementing short-term stopgap measures. These include rationing and importing water, shuttering government offices, declaring more public holidays, suspending social services, and penalizing households and businesses for overconsumption. Meanwhile, residential and commercial property owners, managers, and tenants with low-to-no water pressure have been forced to purchase or lease tanks to temporarily increase storage. For its part, the state continues to contemplate evacuating the capital and has proceeded with periodic supply cuts in certain neighborhoods of cities and provinces. It has also issued more warnings to citizens about the severity of the situation and urged them to conserve water or confront penalties.
To stabilize the supply and maintain the quality of water in Tehran, officials expedited projects, such as a new pipe system that encircled the city and was expected to be completed by the end of 2024. For decades, they tried to expand the sewage systems and wastewater networks of Tehran and other cities to collect, treat, and recycle water. However, these projects were delayed due to issues that included inadequate funding, rapid urbanization, and manhole theft. To reduce consumption, authorities announced in April of this year that users who ignored warnings in anticipation of summer-related outages would face supply cuts for twelve hours. However, they have been unable to stem the tide of the crisis, whether managing it from the demand or supply side.
Until officials devise sensible and sustainable solutions and reforms that adequately address the root causes of the crisis, any actions will continue to be Band-Aids. These solutions and reforms should involve improving interagency and cross-sectoral coordination and developing a national strategy for environmental governance and water management. To mitigate scarcity and optimize usage, the state could establish inspection teams that prevent excessive extraction at legal wells and shut down illegal ones. In certain areas, it could also create water trading and so-called sponge cities, with features such as permeable pavement to absorb rainwater and reduce runoff.
Furthermore, the state could incentivize homes, factories, and farms to install high-efficiency appliances, fixtures, and other equipment—from dishwashers, showerheads, and toilets to systems that monitor, filter, and recycle water. It could also encourage them to adopt prudent processes and practices, such as rapid leak repair, smart meter use, and landscaping that utilizes rain barrels and drought-tolerant plants.
From a bottom-up standpoint or at the societal level, the state should be more inclusive by incorporating the community stakeholders most severely impacted by the crisis into planning and implementation. For example, user associations could be drafted to help manage resources locally.
For Iran, the stakes of formulating and instituting sound policy could not be higher, as the crisis consumes nearly every aspect of national life and contains catastrophic consequences for the foreseeable future. In an age of accelerated climate change and global warming, Iran’s crisis should serve as a warning to other countries inside and outside the region confronting similar issues that short-term measures are not a substitute for state policy and planning.
For more, check out the Middle East Program’s project on Climate Change, Vulnerability, and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa.
