Amir Kabir Dam
The Iranian capital Tehran is currently approaching the acute phase of a water crisis which has been developing over a period of several years, leading to the threat of evacuation of the city. The crisis is not limited to Tehran: across Iran, from the capital’s high-rise apartments to cities and small towns, the water crisis is taking hold, Reuters reported last week. Authorities have reportedly started spraying clouds with chemicals to induce rain amid the historic drought gripping the country.
This week, reports emerged from Teheran of low water pressure in the city, with the Tehran Regional Water Company advising citizens both to buy pumps to solve the problem and also to get storage tanks to keep water. Energy minister Abbas Aliabadi warned that the government may have to resort to cutting water off completely on some nights to deal with the crisis. Overconsumption of water will be punished, he said, noting that he had a plan to cut electricity to households still filling their swimming pools.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian reportedly warned on November 12th that citizens of Tehran will have to evacuate if rationing fails and it has not rained by December. Authorities are warning that the city could become uninhabitable if the current drought affecting the country continues. Nationwide, 19 major dams – about 10% of the country’s reservoirs – have in effect run dry, currently holding less than 5 percent capacity, Abbasali Keykhaei of the Iranian Water Resources Management Company stated in late October, and dozens of others are not faring much better.
Iran is now in its sixth consecutive year of drought, and the Meteorological Organisation reports that the last year was one of the driest since measurements began, with less than 2.3 mm of rain and down by 81 percent compared with the historical average over the same period. The current drought can be described as historic. One scientific publication presents the analysis of precipitation and temperature data showing that drought effectively commenced in 1999, and that there was a downward trend in rainfall since then. Climate analyses show that there is evidence of an upward trend in drought since 2020. There was some improvement in rainfall between 2016 and 2019, but since 2021, the drought trend has continued. Iran currently also suffers from record heat temperatures: temperatures spiked above 50 degrees Celsius in parts of the country in August.
Tehran is a metropolis with a population of about 9.7 million people. The five dams that supply the city with water - Lar, Latyan, Karaj (Amir Kabir), Taleqan, and Mamlu - are currently in a critical phase, officials have stated. The Lar Dam has fallen to just 2% of its capacity, while the Latyan Dam is only about 9% full. The Amir Kabir Dam, one of the most important dams for Tehran, is at 11 % capacity and the volume held in its reservoir has dropped by 80% compared to last year – as against a 39% average decrease in inflow into dams nationally. The Mamlu reservoir is at 1% of its capacity, while only Taleqan Dam remains above one-third.
Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi told reporters in the beginning of November that the state will imminently start rationing water, even fully shutting it off at night across the country if necessary. Even before the announcement, people online and some media reported that water stopped flowing at night in Tehran.
Millions of people this summer have suffered the effects of what now has been described as a triple crisis: power and water outages combined with record-breaking heat. The uncertainties whether water will flow and electricity is available cause people to having to adapt both physically as psychologically, creating unwanted adverse health effects.
Reza Haji-Karim, head of Iran’s Water Industry Federation says that “Water rationing should have started much earlier. Right now, 62 percent of Tehran’s water comes from underground sources, and the level of these aquifers has dropped sharply.” The crisis, he said, is the result of years of neglecting scientific warnings about groundwater depletion and climate change. “The only way to save Tehran is through a chain of measures – from wastewater recycling and consumption reform to cutting agricultural water use,” he added.
In internal research reports, including by the Majis (Parliament) Research Centre, experts are pointing out that the shortages are caused by decades of poor water management and an increasing imbalance between supply and demand, all compounded by climate change. Human factors such as population growth, increased water consumption, and the dependence of economic sectors - including agriculture - are impacting on water stress to a greater degree than natural factors.
Also, the drive for agricultural self-sufficiency has had an impact on water consumption: more than 90 percent of Iran’s water supply is devoted to agriculture, which only accounted for about 12 percent of Iran’s GDP and about 14 percent of employment in the Iranian calendar year that ended in March 2025, according to Aljazeera, whereby 60% of the water devoted to agriculture is wasted.
IntelliNews reports on the 600 dams that have been built in Iran, cutting rivers and drying wetlands without recourse to the long term, and without intensive studies that are usually a precondition to effective dam building. The government has called for 20% water conservation by residents, though management of industrial, restaurant, hospital and agricultural water supplies remains unclear.
With no rain in sight, officials of Iran Open Data (IOD) warn that the total water system of Iran, consisting of dams located to the north and west of Tehran (66%), groundwater (11.7%), springs (12%), and qanats (historical structures that store water underground/10%) could run dry by January. IOD’s analysis of government data reveals a system in collapse which is man made— the result of overuse, drought, and decades of mismanagement.
Payne et al, in a study published in August of this year describe that stores of underground fresh water are shrinking in Iran as people are removing this water to grow crops. When these stores shrink, this can cause the land surface to move down. More than 31,400 km2 of Iran (an area the size of Belgium) is moving down faster than 10 mm/yr. Most of this land movement due to water store shrinking cannot be reversed. The data indicates where cracks or faults (where earthquakes can happen) might be hidden under the land surface. Karaj has the highest chance of these cracks causing damage to buildings—23,000 people live where there is high chance of damage due to downwards land movement around these cracks.
Farshid Vahedifard, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tufts University on November 12th, said the situation will deteriorate unless the country receives substantial rain and snowfall in critical regions. “Otherwise, the human toll, both economic and social, will be severe,” he told Al Jazeera.
