Life & Style
Tehran Faces Evacuation as Iran’s Water Crisis Deepens to Record Levels
Tehran is confronting one of the most severe water shortages in its modern history, with officials warning that parts of the capital may eventually need to be evacuated if rain does not arrive soon. What began as a persistent drought has escalated into a full-scale national emergency, exposing decades of over-extraction, outdated infrastructure, and accelerating climate pressures.
For weeks, government authorities have issued increasingly urgent alerts. Reservoir levels that supply drinking water and electricity to the capital have plunged to record lows, with one crucial dam hovering around 10% of its capacity. Others are not far behind. In several parts of the city, residents already endure lengthy daily water cuts — sometimes up to 18 hours — pushing households to rely on pumps and private storage tanks.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has openly acknowledged the severity of the crisis, noting that if rainfall does not pick up by late autumn, the government will be forced to implement strict rationing across Tehran. If conditions worsen further, evacuating parts of the metropolis — home to more than 10 million people — may no longer be a theoretical scenario but a necessary last resort.
A Crisis Years in the Making
The country is now facing its worst drought in at least six decades. A dangerous combination of factors has pushed Iran to this tipping point: dramatically reduced rainfall, rising temperatures, expanding demand for water, and decades of overuse of groundwater reserves. Many of these aquifers, once considered reliable buffers during dry years, have been drained faster than nature can replenish them.
Agriculture, which consumes the majority of Iran’s water, has also suffered massive losses. Dried-up fields, shrinking harvests, and collapsing local economies are adding social pressure to an already fragile situation. Environmental experts warn that unchecked depletion risks long-term consequences, including land subsidence and advancing desertification — changes that cannot be easily reversed.
Daily Life Under Strain
In neighbourhoods across Tehran, daily routines are adjusting to an increasingly unreliable water supply. Families fill buckets overnight to last the day. Businesses arrange their operations around water disruptions. Hospitals and essential facilities are prioritised, leaving residential zones more vulnerable to cuts.
Public frustration is rising, but so is a sense of helplessness. For many Iranians, the crisis is no longer about inconvenience — it is about survival.
What Comes Next
Officials are now discussing emergency pathways: nationwide rationing, emergency water transfers, and fast-tracking new infrastructure. But experts caution that any short-term fix will only delay the inevitable unless deeper reforms are undertaken.
Those reforms, they say, must include modernising irrigation, reducing water-intensive farming, improving urban consumption systems, and restoring damaged groundwater basins — policies that require long-term political will and substantial investment.
Iran’s unfolding water crisis is an unmistakable warning. Without major structural changes, Tehran — one of the Middle East’s largest and most influential cities — may face an unthinkable future: a capital struggling to sustain its own population. In a warming climate, water scarcity is no longer a regional problem but a global one, and Tehran has become its most pressing example.
Read More : Taps may run dry in this country, where the water crisis is so severe it can be seen from space | CNN
theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/02/iran-must-move-its-capital-from-tehran-says-president-as-water-crisis-worsens?utm_source
