Dry Taps, Empty Lakes, Shuttered Cities: A Water Crisis Batters Iran

NY Times ^ | July 26, 2025 | By Farnaz Fassihi, Sanam Mahoozi and Leily Nikounazar

[dennisw]

Already prone to droughts, Iran has exacerbated the problem with poor water management policies, which Mr. Pezeshkian acknowledged on Monday. Climate change, too, has played a role; the country has weathered five consecutive years of drought.

Now, the crisis has grown so extreme that the government shut down all government offices and services in Tehran and more than two dozen other cities across the country on Wednesday, creating a three-day weekend in an attempt to lower water and electricity usage. Fatemeh Mohajerani, a government spokeswoman, said cities could have similar closures once or twice a week going forward, and suggested people “go on holiday.”

Some of Iran’s deepest reservoirs have shrunk to shallow ponds. Water pressure is so low in some cities that taps in apartment buildings run dry for hours on end. People desperately search for water tanks, and hoard every drop they can find.

Temperatures are so high that one day last month a part of Iran saw a heat index of 149 degrees Fahrenheit, according to sites that track extreme weather, making it one of the hottest places on Earth. Iran is in the throes of an acute water crisis, on top of a monthslong energy shortage that has prompted daily scheduled power cuts across the country. Iranians still recovering from a 12-day war with Israel and the United States last month must now confront life without the basics.

The government announced this week that many reservoirs, particularly those that supply the capital, Tehran, with drinking water, were drying out. Water supplies for Tehran are predicted to run out in just a few weeks, officials said, pleading with the public to reduce water consumption.

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TOPICS: Agriculture; Business/Economy; Food
KEYWORDS: axisofwatershortage; boltonneocons; chanceofheavypergasm; farnazfassihi; glowbullwarming; leilynikounazar; sanammahoozi; shortbusmaximus

[butlerweave]

Well islam is great at running countries into the ground

[Menehune56]

... Iran saw a heat index of 149 degrees Fahrenheit, according to sites that track extreme weather, making it one of the hottest places on Earth.

That does does sound like hell.

[dennisw]

Iran is an arid nation that cannot support 90 million population. Unless it has has oil money billions coming in that they use to buy grains and food abroad.

Evil ratface Ayatollahs blew billions on stupid Allah’s proxy wars while neglecting their water infrastructure. Due to massive research and spending on desalination plants, Israel has more water than it knows what to do with. They are a world leader in low cost desalinization research and implementation.

[Nextrush]

This reminds me of the propaganda about Russia and China being failed nations or having failing leadership etc. etc.

[dennisw]

“Well islam is great at running countries into the ground”

Muhammad’s brain worm is inserted 5x daily during their prayers. This obviously is not helping them to build proper water delivery infrastructure. But to depend on mythical unicorn Allah to provide.

[redfreedom]

Only those that are extremely stupid, brainwashed and ignorant of history will believe an Iranian drought or high temps could be caused by “climate change”, aka man made glowbull warming.

I’m so tired of this endless propaganda. It’s not working anymore. The rats are in a sink hole and getting deeper into it.

Doubling down on propaganda, woke’ism and communism is only worsening their situation. Thank God they are too dumb to change.

[dfwgator]

I’m so tired of this endless propaganda. It’s not working anymore.

---

It may not work on you, but it works on plenty of others. How in the hell could someone like Kamala Harris still get 46% of the vote?

[metmom]

Well islam is great at running countries into the ground

Just like democrats.

[xp38]

Genesis 12:3
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.

Funny how things work out eh?

[Flaming Conservative]

Why doesn’t the Red Crescent truck in water? Aren’t they operating from a giving heart? But I’m sorry for the Iranian people; they have been subjugated by an evil government that has succeeded in indoctrinating a good portion of them.

[catnipman]

they should have been building country-sized desal plants like the Israelis did, instead of pissing their oil loot away on futile attempts at building nukes and building missile and drone factories for attacking Israel and for supplying a plethora of proxies to attack Israel plus selling the rest to the russkies to shoot at Ukraine ...

oh well: F’k ‘em ...

[heck, even the Moroccans are building a seawater desalination project that will be the largest in Africa and the second largest in the world.]

[Harpotoo]

Maybe they should buy some desalination plants from ISRAEL;-)

[VTenigma]

Maybe instead of spending billions enriching uranium they could work on basic needs.

[woodbutcher1963]

Meanwhile there is potable drinking water in the city of Rome that was brought by aqueduct from the mountains 2000 years ago. Those Roman(slaves) got sh#t done!

[PIF]

Sort of like the Donbas in Ukraine:

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Anton Gerashchenko@Gerashchenko_en

In the first video, people in Donetsk are seen greeting a water tanker.

In the second video, during the rain, people try to collect at least a drop of water because the water pipeline from the Siverskyi Donets was destroyed by the Russians.

When Donetsk was not occupied by Russia, the city hosted the European Football Championship, as well as concerts by Rihanna and Beyoncé.

Now, there is no more running water in the city. According to the schedule, water only appears in taps once every three days, and even then it doesn’t reach every household, so water has to be delivered by tankers, with long queues forming for it. People use plastic bags as toilets, and this filth spreads everywhere.

This is happening not only in Donetsk - water is supplied once every two days in a number of other cities, including Mariupol.

This is how Russia ‘liberated’ Donbas.

Why is this happening?

In the past three and a half years - since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 - reservoirs in Donetsk Oblast have significantly dried up.

The water supply system from the Siverskyi Donets River was destroyed.

The region’s reservoirs and underground water sources are not enough to meet the needs of the population, in part due to the extensive network of coal mines.

When the self-proclaimed “DPR” and “LPR” were created in 2014, Ukraine did not cut off this water channel, as it was still supplying water to Mariupol, which remained under Ukrainian control.

But at the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, the situation changed: the Russian army, during its offensive, destroyed a unique hydraulic structure that had supplied the region’s largest cities with water.

The Russian authorities decided to build a new canal - the Don–Donbas canal - which was supposed to begin in the Rostov-on-Don area.

It soon became clear that the new water pipeline, first of all, could not provide the region with the necessary amount of water, and second, it was built with numerous violations, with a large portion of the budget embezzled during construction.

Crimea is also suffering from a water shortage, and the situation is worsening.

One of the reasons why Russia is striving to seize southern Ukraine is that it sees this as a way to “solve the water issue” for the occupied territories.

[bgill]

Even Mother Nature is trying to turn it into a parking lot.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_and_reservoirs_in_Iran

“As of 2010, Iran has constructed 588 dams (big and small), with 137 more under construction and 546 planned.”

I imagine dam busting tech has advanced since WWII.

[sauropod]

Bkmk