Iran is suffering its worst water crisis of its entire modern existence. Decades of neglect and mismanagement of its water infrastructure by the Iranian government, along with geopolitical factors that have cut off Tehran’s access to the foremost experts in water management — the hated state of Israel — are two of the factors. So is the steep rise in Iran’s population, which went from 37 million when the ayatollahs’ regime took over to 90 million today, with the obvious concomitant rise in water use. The nuclear project that Iran’s rulers insist on continuing has cost the country tens of billions of dollars in both direct costs and from the sanctions imposed on Iran by the West — money that might have been spent on water conservation, advanced water-saving irrigation techniques, desalination plants, and even on the Watergen machines, a recent Israeli invention that produce drinking water from the circumambient air. Furthermore, the nuclear facilities require a great deal of water to keep them cooled so that there is no danger of meltdown. Then there are the effects of global warming, that increase the evaporation from lakes, rivers, and reservoirs. All of these contribute to creating the worst water crisis in Iran’s history. More on this crisis, to which there is no simple answer, can be found here: “Iran’s water crisis at tipping point in threat to Islamic regime’s stability,” by Ohad Merlin, Jerusalem Post, March 30, 2025:
“Iran is drying up,” Dr. Sharona Mazalian Levi from The Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University affirmed, painting a grim picture of what she described as one of the most pressing environmental challenges facing the Islamic Republic today.
“Iran is facing an unprecedented water crisis that threatens the nation’s stability,” Mazalian Levi said. She explained that multiple factors have converged to create this critical situation, with several major provinces now reaching what she deemed “a tipping point.”
According to Mazalian Levi, the Iranian Energy Ministry declared last week that the provinces of Tehran, Isfahan, Razavi Khorasan, and Yazd are facing a severe water crisis. She highlighted the alarming state of the Karaj Dam, which supplies water to millions in Tehran and the surrounding areas.
The water crisis is almost everywhere in Iran, but at its worst in four of the country’s main provinces, including Tehran. The Karaj Dam on which people in Tehran, the capital, rely, is down to only 6% of capacity. And the water level is still decreasing.
“The Karaj Dam is now at only 6% of its capacity,” she noted, referencing reports from Tasnim news agency that 94% of the reservoir is empty. “This isn’t just an environmental issue; it’s a potential catalyst for civil unrest and disorder that could lead to national instability.”
This water crisis should be distinguished from those which brought Iranian protesters out in the past. In 2009, they were protesting the lack of political freedom. In 2022, demonstrators came out across Iran to protest the killing of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish Iranian girl, by the morality police who had picked her up for incorrectly wearing her hijab. The water crisis transcends those; it affects everyone in Iran, even supporters of the regime.
Two of the main catalysts for the crisis are what Mazalian Levi named “poor management of the water sector,” as well as a population growth of more than 250% in only 50 years. “This includes over-extraction from natural water sources and aquifers to the point of depletion,” she added.
It ordinarily takes thousands of years for large aquifers to accumulate water, and it will take the same amount of time to fully replenish them.. That makes it essentially a non-renewable resource that Iran, which has recently had almost no rain or snowmelt, has been using up at a dizzying pace. It would have been much better for Iran had it instead relied on husbanding the water it uses for irrigation, and even more important, much better if it had built still more, and more advanced, desalination plants along its shore with the Persian Gulf in the south and the Caspian Sea in the north.
However, Mazalian Levi traced the origins of the crisis further back in history. According to the researcher, following the 1979 revolution, Iran found itself internationally isolated and was forced to develop an autarkic economic system. Religious leaders, including then-supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini, encouraged citizens to embrace farming and agriculture as a way of life, drawing from texts regarding the Prophet Muhammad himself.
When Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979, Iran became a pariah state. The regime decided it would rely as little as possible on the outside world, and Iranians who had left the land to flock to the cities for work under the Shah were now encouraged to return to rural areas to grow food for the country. This increase in the agricultural economy required more water to be used. However, the water-saving irrigation methods developed by the Israelis, such as drip irrigation, and the advanced desalination plants in whose construction Israel is a world leader, were not available due to the ayatollahs’ determination to have nothing to do with the “Zionist entity.”
