Extract from ABC News
Tehran's water taps have started to run dry. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters)
It was early November when the Iranian president was forced to make a startling admission.
Faced with a perfect storm of weather woes and decades of mismanagement, Masoud Pezeshkian issued a warning to his country that the situation could deteriorate even further.
"We've run short of water. If it doesn't rain, we in Tehran … must start rationing," he said.
"Even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all.
"They [citizens] must evacuate Tehran."
While it may seem like an exaggeration, it is the shocking reality facing the Iranian population — particularly in its capital, which has in excess of 15 million people across the broader metropolitan area.
Taps are already running dry across Iran as the government enforces strict rationing to try to conserve what limited supplies it still has.
Iran's Kan River is drying up. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters)
Three Iranian women have shared with the ABC their fears of the crisis. Their names have been changed to protect their identities and ensure they do not face reprisals for speaking out.
"With all the economic pressure we're facing, we come home exhausted from work, trying to do the housework, do the dishes, cook, clean, and the moment we turn on the tap, there's no water," Bahareh said in a voice note.
"And it's not for an hour or two — they cut it from around 8 or 9pm until 2 or 3 in the morning, and sometimes not even restoring it until the next day.
"It's become a huge concern for us. We constantly have to worry and store water."
Millions could be forced out of Tehran if Iran's drought worsens. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters)
She added that the details coming from Iranian authorities did not instil much confidence.
"The officials don't take any action to resolve the problems. They have no plans,"she said.
"They simply appear on TV and say, 'If it doesn't rain till December, we'll have to evacuate Tehran entirely.'
"How is that even possible?"
'Water bankruptcy'
Iran's government is citing a number of different factors leading to this point.
Rainfall across much of the country is about 85 per cent below average, with the worst drought conditions in about 60 years taking hold.
Decades of mismanagement of natural resources, including the construction of too many dams and a lack of enforcement when it came to drilling illegal wells, have combined with inefficient agriculture and adverse weather conditions to lead to the crisis.
"Tehran — the richest city of Iran, the most politically powerful city with more than 15,000,000 in the metropolitan — is facing day zero in a few days or a few weeks," Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health, told the ABC earlier this month.
"The taps might completely dry if there is no rain."
Iran's Amir Kabir dam is drying up. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters)
Professor Madani, who was once the deputy head of Iran's environment department, described the issue as "water bankruptcy".
He likened the surface water, which includes rivers, lakes and wetlands, to a "checking account" and the groundwater to a "savings account".
"If you look at the situation of Iran, you see not only they have exhausted [their] checking account, but also their saving account, and for years they have spent more than what they could afford," he said.
"The argument here is that the water bankruptcy problem as a whole has been the underlying problem, and it was going on for many years now.
"Drought and climate change are acting as catalysts, boosting this problem and exacerbating it."
'Nowhere else to go'
Another woman in Tehran, 34-year-old Shiva, had moved to the city for work. She fears what the water shortage could mean for her future.
"Everyone keeps telling me that if the evacuation happens, I'll lose my job and be forced to move somewhere else," she told the ABC.
"But I don't even have the means to go back to my hometown, let alone start over somewhere new.
"It's created a huge sense of uncertainty. Where am I supposed to go? What's going to happen to us?
"How can a city this big even be evacuated? What will happen to people like me who have nowhere else to go?"
People are buying water tanks during the drought crisis in Tehran. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters)
Another Iranian, Nasim, said the quality of the drinking water they did get was "very poor".
She argued that cutting off water supplies, or "reducing pressure" as it was described by authorities, was not "a real solution".
"I see that people are buying all kinds of water storage containers, from small 4 litre buckets to large tanks," she said.
"Even if we don't use water during those cut-off hours, we still have to store it."
Dams drying up
Satellite imagery has shown the scale of the depleted water reserves in dams across Iran.
Nineteen major dams, accounting for about 10 per cent of the country's supplies, are reportedly dry.
Many that still hold water are at single-digit percentage capacity.
"Seeing the empty dams is deeply heartbreaking," Nasim said.
"It's really depressing. Even now, on the roads to this point, you can see the trees have lost their colour and are drying out."
Professor Madani said it would take years to fix the long-term problem of "water bankruptcy".
For now, he said, the government needed to be transparent with its citizens about water conservation.
"At the city scale, it's all about survival right now — surviving longer, resisting longer against the drought and ensuring that Tehran would not fully hit the day zero when the taps would completely run dry," he said.
"That requires proper communication with people … and transparency. You [have] got to tell the citizens what's going on, how much water exactly you have … and then invite them to join forces and help you.
"You have to take the blame, you have to admit that you're water bankrupt, you have to admit that you have made mistakes, but right now, all are in it together."
He warned that was the only way to ensure the cooperation of the population.
"They, the citizens, pay the price of this, pay the cost of inaction for so many years, so this is now an emergency management situation," he said.
"All you can do is work with the public and invite them to consume less, and it's not easy in societies where the public don't trust the government and the government doesn't have a good social capital."
Cloud seeding 'a delusion'
On Monday a major downpour fuelled significant flooding in some parts of Iran, with warnings issued across six provinces.
But rather than be a blessing for the drought-ravaged country, it caused significant damage to the bone-dry landscape.
In recent days, reports have emerged from Iran that authorities have begun a campaign of "cloud seeding" — trying to force clouds to rain by spraying chemicals into them.
But Professor Madani said it was unlikely to solve Iran's water problems.
"[In the best case scenario,] if the right conditions are in place, … cloud seeding might enhance precipitation by … 10 to 15 per cent," he said.
"But we don't have any rich nation in the world claiming that cloud seeding has been a solution to their drought. If that was the case, California would have done it. Australia would have done it.
"That's unfortunately a delusion that cloud seeding would solve the problem. It's just something that you can sell well to the public and confuse them."
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