Over the scorching summer of 2025, Iran’s water crisis reached a new and alarming level, transforming from a long-standing environmental challenge into a full-blown emergency that now threatens the very future of the nation’s capital. Across Tehran, a sprawling metropolis of more than 10 million residents, taps ran dry for half a day at a time. State media issued dire warnings that the city could soon reach “Day Zero”—the moment when water resources are simply insufficient to meet demand. The heat was relentless, with temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and power cuts leaving millions to swelter in the punishing conditions.
Iran’s predicament is not merely the result of a passing drought. As Time magazine reports, the country is facing what experts call “water bankruptcy,” a situation where demand has far outstripped supply. The roots of this crisis stretch back decades and are deeply entwined with political ambition, technological overreach, and—critically—systemic mismanagement. The consequences now ripple far beyond the parched fields and empty reservoirs, threatening urban life, rural livelihoods, and even the country’s political stability.
“The problems the country is currently facing require us to direct the development path towards the Persian Gulf. Tehran, Karaj, and Qazvin are currently facing a water crisis, and this crisis cannot be easily solved,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on October 2, 2025, during a visit to Hormozgan province on the Persian Gulf, according to The Guardian. In a move that underscores the gravity of the situation, Pezeshkian proposed relocating the national capital from Tehran to the south—a drastic measure he had already discussed with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the previous year. The president acknowledged the criticism his proposal had drawn but insisted, “the accumulating resource crises are so deep that Iran now had an obligation to shift the capital, and no choice but to do so.”
Tehran’s water woes are emblematic of a broader national crisis. The city alone consumes nearly a quarter of Iran’s total water supplies. Historically, about 70% of its water came from dams, with the remainder sourced from underground aquifers. However, a devastating combination of low rainfall and increased evaporation has reduced the share provided by dams, forcing greater reliance on already-depleted groundwater. The president cited rainfall figures to illustrate the severity of the situation: “Last year, the rainfall was 140mm, while the standard is 260mm; that means rainfall has fallen by about 50 to 60%. This year, the situation is just as critical.” Recent estimates put the 2025 rainfall at just below 100mm, a further drop that has only worsened the crisis.
It’s not just the water that’s disappearing—the very ground beneath Tehran is sinking. Pezeshkian warned, “In some areas, the land is subsiding by up to 30cm per year. This is a disaster and shows that the water beneath our feet is running out.” The high costs of transporting water from distant regions—up to €4 per cubic meter—underscore the unsustainability of the current approach. “Development without considering the impact on resources and expenditures will result in nothing but destruction. If someone cannot establish this balance, their development is doomed to failure,” Pezeshkian concluded.
The origins of Iran’s water crisis are as much political as they are environmental. According to Time, the country’s fascination with massive infrastructure projects began in the mid-20th century, inspired by the Shah’s admiration for the Hoover Dam and fueled by Cold War-era competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. American engineers arrived in Iran, bringing modern irrigation technology and deep-well drilling equipment. The Shah’s modernization drive placed water-hungry industries in the arid central plateau and tied economic development to regions with little natural water, dependent on diversions from other basins.
Traditional water systems, like the ingenious underground qanats that had sustained settlements for millennia, were gradually abandoned. As deep wells proliferated, aquifers were drained at a breakneck pace. The 1960s land reforms, intended to break up feudal estates and modernize agriculture, further hastened the shift away from sustainable practices. Many small farmers, unable to adapt, migrated to cities—fueling the urban growth that now compounds Tehran’s problems.
After the 1979 revolution, the new Islamic Republic doubled down on well drilling and dam construction, often ignoring the warnings of scientists. “Between 1980 and 1988, as the war with Iraq drained the national budget, only a handful of dams were under construction. After the war, my father and his scientist colleagues warned that dams and water-intensive farming were unsustainable in a warming climate. But their voices were drowned out,” wrote Kaveh Madani, an Iranian water expert, in Time. Instead, a powerful “water mafia”—a network of regime insiders, contractors, and consultants—emerged, profiting from dam projects that often lacked environmental safeguards. This system, Madani notes, “became engines of patronage, enriching insiders, killing rivers and exacting a terrible cost from rural communities.”
The environmental toll has been devastating. Lake Urmia, once the largest lake in the Middle East, was reduced to a salt-crusted basin by the 2010s after dam-building and water diversions throttled its inflows. Satellite imagery and field surveys reveal entire farming communities vanishing as groundwater sources failed. By the summer of 2024, more than 10,000 villages had no access to drinking water, while a broader crisis affected some 27,000 villages, stripping residents of work and status.
Compounding the problem, agriculture accounts for nearly 90% of water usage—far above the 40% threshold that experts say is necessary to preserve rivers, wetlands, and aquifers. Tehran itself loses nearly a third of its water through broken pipes, a staggering inefficiency that further strains already scarce supplies. Solutions exist, but they have been largely ignored in favor of megaprojects that benefit a select few. Experts advocate for abandoning water-intensive crops, adopting smart farming practices, reviving floodwater recharge techniques, and modernizing city water systems with leak detection and wastewater reuse.
The crisis is not confined to Iran’s borders. With rivers and aquifers shared with neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, the risk of regional disputes looms large. As Time warns, “The water crisis won’t stop at Iran’s borders as disputes over shared river basins with neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan could ignite the region’s next security flashpoint.”
Iran’s predicament is a cautionary tale for any society that treats water as an infinite resource. The collapse of one of the world’s oldest water civilizations serves as a stark reminder: without urgent reform and a commitment to sustainability, the wells—both literal and metaphorical—will run dry.
