In November, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stated that the country “has no choice” but to relocate its capital. Severe ecological strain has made Tehran impossible to sustain. Even as that country’s regime spends billions of dollars on rebuilding its military and nuclear infrastructure as well as supporting terrorist groups in the Middle East, Iran is running out of water.
After five years of extreme drought, Iran’s long-running water crisis has reached unprecedented levels. While failed rains are the immediate cause of the crisis, the real culprit is more than a half century of often foolhardy modern water engineering. Tens of thousands of ancient tunnels for sustainably tapping underground water that were once the envy of other arid countries have been destroyed or abandoned.
To meet growing water shortages, Iran was one of the top three dam-builders in the world in the late 20th century. Today, many of the reservoirs behind Iran’s dams are all but empty. The five reservoirs that serve Tehran were at 12% of capacity in November.
Iran has a proud tradition of sophisticated management of its meager water resources but has largely abandoned it under its current regime. Repairing and recharging its underground water tunnels and redirecting otherwise wasted water from the flash floods that occur are strategies experts recommend. But these ideas have been rebuffed by the government. The Iranian government wants to build more dams and dig more pumped wells. These things make no sense when there is no water left to tap.
