As if Heaven responded to ‘irrigation prayers’ across the country in the last couple of weeks, rainfall this week caused floods in parts of western Iran after months of drought that led to the worst water crisis in decades. The country’s meteorological organisation issued a warning for flooding in 6 western provinces, saying it expected rain in 18 out of Iran’s 31 provinces.
Yet, it was not prayers that brought heavy rainfall but rather cloud-seeding by authorities during the last weekend. The procedure is widely used in Gulf Arab countries by impregnating clouds with chemicals on aeroplanes, so it forms rain that later drops on the earth.
It’s not clear if the last bout of rain, despite being heavy in some areas, would mean an end to the water scarcity crisis in the country already strangled by unprecedented economic sanctions.
Just days before, around ten million Iranians living in Tehran were suffering water cuts at night and the possibility of rationing in two weeks. The authorities announced the cuts as reservoirs supplying the city have almost dried up.
The government started cutting the water supply in the capital days before the media mentioned rationing water early this month. Iran’s National Water and Wastewater Company rejected reports of imposing formal rationing in Tehran but admitted nightly pressure cuts citywide may fall to zero amid worsening shortages. In a statement carried by the state media, the company said “no water rationing – the scheduled and announced distribution and supply of water on a rotating basis – has so far been implemented in Tehran or any other city in the country."
Iranians were stunned by President Masoud Pezeshkian’s warning on 7 November that the Iranian capital Tehran “might have to be evacuated if there are no rains before the end of the year." Some comments on social media by Iranians inside the country who can circumvent internet controls using VPN or other tools mocked the announcement, wondering how to evacuate the capital and where to go. Most Iranian cities face the recurring challenge of drought, and this has been escalating in recent years.
The reservoirs of the five dams that feed the capital’s water supply are drying up to the lowest level in a century. Some of them have just three percent of their capacity. The water crisis is not confined to Tehran, but almost all major cities in the country face the same problem. Photos and videos on social media show the dam water levels below ten percent and completely dry river beds.
Iran’s Meteorological Organisation said that in the provinces of Yazd, Hamedan, Markazi, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Kermanshah, Kurdistan, Khuzestan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Ilam and Isfahan, there has been a hundred percent reduction in precipitation in the past year.
Though scientific research blames climate change and eco-geographic factors for the drought, many in Tehran and in the opposition abroad blame the Islamic regime in power and its policies for arriving at that point in water deprivation. As a Dubai-based Iran expert told Al Ahram Weekly, such opposition claims have some merit. “Had Iran opted to avoid severe sanctions by agreeing to the world’s demands concerning its nuclear program earlier, it could have used its nuclear development to build more desalination projects. That would have provided water to make up for shortages. There is an element of mismanagement and wrong policies by the government in addition to increasing and decreasing rainfall,” he said.
The authorities are focusing on climate change as the main reason for minimal or negligible rainfall in the last decade or so, besides temperatures rising above normal levels. The media reported the head of the regional water company, Mohsen Ardakaniw, as saying that “Higher than normal heat has intensified the evaporation of water resources and the Karaj Dam is currently more than 90 percent empty.” The Karaj Dam is one of the suppliers to the capital that serves Alborz Province, just northwest of Tehran.
Iran has faced six years in a row of no or minimal rainfall. This year, Tehran Province only received about six inches of rainfall, which is desert-level water, as at least ten inches a year are needed to avoid desert ecology. The Iranian opposition accuses consecutive governments of mismanaging the water crisis and ignoring scientific research. Due to years of rising temperature and declining rain, the authorities have relied heavily on aquifers, depleting underground water and compounding the disaster.
The opposition is intensifying its attack on the regime. On a programme of an opposition media outlet, Iran International, the guest was Kaveh Madani, an Iranian water scholar who briefly joined the government in 2017 to help address the crisis and left within months after being accused of espionage. He concluded that “Iran’s environmental catastrophe is not primarily a natural disaster. It is a political choice.” The country has spent beyond its ecological income, mortgaging rivers and aquifers to service short-term promises. When scientists say so, their work is treated as a security risk. “When knowledge becomes ‘security’, water is no longer secure,” Madani said on the show.
But climate change is still the major reason Iran is facing this water crisis. In April this year, Dr Fatemeh Chaparinia, professor in the Department of Environmental Health Engineering at the School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, wrote about it in Scientific Reports. She reviewed climate data from 29 provincial capitals from 1992 to 2022 and found clear warming trends and changes in rainfall patterns.
The researcher and her team found that most of Iran’s cities have grown perceptibly hotter. Almost all 29 urban centres experienced increases in their average daily high temperatures, and three-quarters showed a significant rise in average daily temperatures, with a rise of 0.16º °C per year. That is a frightening trend, since it translates into 1.6ºC every ten years. Over 30 years, that equals a 4.8º °C increase. In all of the last 250 years, the earth’s average surface temperature has heated up 1.3º °C because of people burning coal, petroleum and fossil gases, which emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Iran, like the Middle East in general, is heating up twice as fast as the global average.
Despite the eco-geographical reasons for water scarcity, the challenge the Iranian government faces now is more socio-political. The population is suffering under renewed sanctions, with the national currency deteriorating and food prices skyrocketing. Prospects of another attack on Iran by Israel or the US, due to a stalemate in nuclear programme negotiations, hover over Tehran. People can see no improvement on the horizon. As one angry Iranian said, “Can we blame ‘mother nature’ for blighting us with this government as well?”
Iran seems to be drying up not only in terms of water but also of political options to overcome daunting problems accumulated over the years.
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