{"id":308268,"date":"2025-11-23T03:56:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T03:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/308268\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T03:56:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T03:56:11","slug":"tehrans-water-crisis-is-a-warning-for-every-thirsty-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/308268\/","title":{"rendered":"Tehran\u2019s water crisis is a warning for every thirsty city"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by Vox<\/a> and is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/p>\n

Tehran is running out of water.<\/p>\n

Rationing has\u00a0begun<\/a>\u00a0in Iran\u2019s capital city, with some of the approximately 10 million residents experiencing \u201cnightly pressure cuts<\/a>\u201d between midnight and 5 a.m. The entire country is in an unprecedented drought,\u00a0facing<\/a>\u00a0its driest \u2014 and hottest \u2014 autumn in nearly 60 years. Tehran has\u00a0received<\/a>\u00a0no rain at all since the start of September, and no rainfall is expected for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

The city\u00a0depends<\/a>\u00a0on five major reservoirs for its water supply. One has dried up completely, with another below 8 percent capacity. The managing director of the Tehran Regional Water Authority told state media last week that the Karaj Dam has only two weeks of drinking water left. The drought extends beyond the city, too. The water reserves of Mashhad, the second largest city in the country, have\u00a0dropped<\/a>\u00a0below 3 percent capacity, putting 4 million people at imminent risk.<\/p>\n

But if nothing changes, Tehran may soon face\u00a0Day Zero<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 or when a municipality can no longer supply drinking water to its residents and taps run dry. In October, President Masoud Pezeshkian\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0that Tehran could no longer serve as the country\u2019s capital, citing the water crisis as a major factor.<\/p>\n

\u201dIf it doesn\u2019t rain in Tehran by late November, we\u2019ll have to [formally] ration water,\u201d Pezeshkian\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0Iranian state media on Thursday. \u201cAnd if it still doesn\u2019t rain, we\u2019ll have to evacuate Tehran.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s unlikely evacuation will happen any time soon, Tehran\u2019s water crisis is not made equal. When the taps run dry, more affluent Tehranis\u00a0purchase<\/a>\u00a0mineral water or rely on water tankers, a prohibitively expensive option for many. The rest must rely on charity, or they will die of thirst.<\/p>\n

How did things get this dire?<\/p>\n

Water use in Tehran is quite\u00a0high<\/a>, even for cities. But Iran\u2019s water problems go deeper than this record-breaking drought.<\/p>\n

The country is uniquely isolated and subject to numerous sanctions, crippling the economy and making it very difficult for Iran to obtain state-of-the-art water technologies. It\u2019s an enemy state to many of its\u00a0neighbors<\/a>, as well as regional leaders in desalination technology \u2014\u00a0Israel<\/a>,\u00a0Saudi Arabia<\/a>, and the\u00a0United Arab Emirates<\/a>. But desalination is\u00a0largely irrelevant<\/a>\u00a0in an Iranian context, often coming at a\u00a0high environmental cost<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to water issues analyst Nik Kowser, Iranians are under the thumb of a \u201cwater mafia<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a shadowy and well-connected network driving these megaprojects for their own gain. \u201cIran faces water bankruptcy, with demand far outstripping supply,\u201d Kowsar\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in Time. \u201cThe collapse of water security in Iran has been decades in the making and is rooted in a mania for megaprojects \u2014 dam building, deep wells, and water transfer schemes \u2014 that ignored the fundamentals of hydrology and ecological balance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran is also\u00a0particularly vulnerable<\/a>\u00a0to the effects of climate change: Over 82 percent of the country is arid or semi-arid, and Iran is sixth on the list of countries most prone to natural disasters. The country grows thirsty crops, and its quest for food security and self-sufficiency is a tremendous\u00a0driver<\/a>\u00a0of its water bankruptcy. The agricultural sector\u00a0comprises<\/a>\u00a0up to 90 percent of the country\u2019s total water withdrawals.
But Iran\u2019s environmental crisis does strain existing geopolitical tensions both inside and outside of the country. Water is sometimes transported from one region of the country to supply another, driving fears that certain ethnic populations are intentionally being deprived at the expense of others.<\/p>\n

Yale University historian and Iran expert\u00a0Arash Azizi<\/a>, who is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic, told me that despite the tremendous humanitarian cost of continued sanctions, they are very unlikely to be removed in response to the water crisis.<\/p>\n

The future of urban living<\/p>\n

Tehran joins many, many other cities that have approached Day Zero, and it certainly will not be the last. S\u00e3o Paulo in Brazil and Cape Town, South Africa, had similar crises that\u00a0ended<\/a>\u00a0with rainfall. Tehran might not be so lucky in terms of its weather forecast, though.<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s loop back to the idea of evacuating Tehran.<\/p>\n

It is, of course, incredibly unpopular. Iranians balked at the idea when the president mentioned the possibility. Former Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0this was \u201ca joke. \u2026 Evacuating Tehran makes no sense at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Azizi thinks it\u2019s unlikely that Iran will end up moving its capital anytime soon. The majority of jobs are in Tehran. And evacuating a city of upward of 10 million people would be an incredible logistical challenge.
More importantly, relocation won\u2019t fix the immediate issue of water access. But the current strategy of trucking in supplies, rationing water, and praying for rain is woefully inadequate to meet the moment. And water rationing is a stopgap measure.<\/p>\n

Read Next<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

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Groundwater is drying out, heating up, and causing sea level rise<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cActually cutting off the supply to households or to individual neighborhoods de facto reduces their consumption,\u201d said David Michel, senior fellow for water security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. \u201cBut the underlying demand is still there.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, there are other kinds of strategies cities like Tehran could employ. Michel argued that cities have to prioritize business models that provide the resources and revenues needed for water systems to operate, maintain, and expand to serve new customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat challenge has put many city water systems around the world into this very challenging spiral where lots of municipal water systems\u2019 revenues don\u2019t cover the costs of operations and maintenance, much less expanding supply,\u201d Michel said. Economic incentives like\u00a0volumetric tariffs<\/a>, where the cost of water is proportional to the amount consumed, could be beneficial. The more you use, the higher price you pay, essentially, with the hope of reducing pressure on the poorest consumers.<\/p>\n

Relief can\u2019t come to Tehran soon enough. American cities in California and the Southwest, with similarly arid climates and dwindling water supplies, should take heed. And everyone should pay attention when the president of Iran says the residents of its capital city may have to evacuate in a few months\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can imagine the psychological effect,\u201d Azizi said. And that could be \u201cthe future of everywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by Vox and is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk\u00a0collaboration. Tehran is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-308268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}