Tehran's water crisis is a warning for every thirsty city

2 hours ago7 min read

The specter of Day Zero looms over Tehran, a sprawling metropolis of 10 million souls now confronting an existential water crisis that serves as a stark parable for our climate-disrupted future. Iran’s capital has initiated nightly water rationing, with pressure cuts between midnight and 5 a.m. , as the entire country endures its driest and hottest autumn in nearly 60 years.Since September, no rain has fallen, and none is forecast, pushing the city's five major reservoirs to the brink; one has dried completely, another languishes below 8 percent capacity, and the Karaj Dam reportedly holds just two weeks of drinking water remaining. This is not an isolated emergency.Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city, watches its reserves plummet below 3 percent, imperiling 4 million more people. The crisis exposes a brutal hierarchy of access: the affluent can purchase mineral water or pay for tankers, while the poor must rely on charity or face dehydration.President Masoud Pezeshkian’s startling suggestion that Tehran may need to be evacuated if rains do not arrive by late November—a notion dismissed as ludicrous by former mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi—underscores the profound desperation. Yet, to view this solely through the lens of a record-breaking drought is to ignore the deeper, human-made currents of ecological collapse.Decades of hydrological mismanagement, driven by a ‘water mafia’ profiting from megaprojects like dam building and deep wells, have ignored fundamental environmental balances, creating a demand that far outstrips supply. Compounded by international sanctions that cripple access to modern water technologies and isolate Iran from regional desalination leaders like Israel and Saudi Arabia, the nation’s plight is intensified by a quest for food self-sufficiency.Agriculture devours up to 90 percent of Iran’s water withdrawals, cultivating thirsty crops in a land where over 82 percent is arid or semi-arid, making the country uniquely vulnerable to climate change. As historian Arash Azizi notes, the psychological toll of this crisis is immense, a forewarning for urban centers everywhere.From São Paulo to Cape Town, cities have teetered on the edge, saved by eventual rainfall, but Tehran’s forecast offers no such reprieve. David Michel, a water security expert, argues that rationing is a mere stopgap; the underlying demand remains, and municipal systems globally are trapped in a spiral where revenues fail to cover operations, let alone expansion.Solutions like volumetric tariffs, which charge more for higher consumption, could alleviate pressure on the poorest, but they require political will and systemic overhaul. Tehran’s struggle is a chilling preview of a world where resource scarcity fuels inequality and geopolitical strife, a future where the simple act of turning on a tap becomes a privilege, not a right.

#featured

#Tehran

#water crisis

#drought

#Day Zero

#climate change

#Iran

#reservoirs

#rationing

#urban living

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