Iran faces unprecedented drought as water crisis hits Tehran
41 comments
·November 10, 2025anonymousiam
FpUser
You gonna say the same about the consequence of events like Hurricane Katrina? Couple of less nukes, military contracts or whatever and you could have prevented the disaster.
logankeenan
The BBC article spelled the dam's name wrong in their interactive image. It's Latyan Dam if anyone else wanted to look up more on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latyan_Dam https://maps.app.goo.gl/UzQrPMR4iHRdbsuP7
Edit: TIL there can be different translations/spellings of Persian to English
decimalenough
Well, the actual spelling is لتيان, so it comes down to how you choose to romanize it.
logankeenan
I had no idea Romanization of Perian was a thing. Thanks for sharing!
rayiner
I find Iran to be a truly baffling civilization. Iranians are so educated and orderly, but the country punches so below its weight class in terms of prosperity.
bikeshaving
Geographically speaking, over 80% of Iran’s land is classified as arid or semi-arid, and it is likely to face over 5°C of warming by the end of the century: the impacts of climate change will likely be more severe in Iran than the regional average. The region suffers from extreme weather including both droughts and flooding, seismic activity in the form tectonic uplift, particularly near the Makran coast, and constant attacks: economic attack by sanction, cyber attack on energy infrastructure, and lately even kinetic attack from neighbors. The fact that the regime hasn’t collapsed is a testament to Persian, Iranian and Islamic culture, and I hope its people find ways to prosper when the deck is so stacked against them.
FridayoLeary
I completely agree with you. We who wish well on Iranians can only hope the situation is speedily rectified and the regime will finally fall, ending the oppression, want, war and poverty they have inflicted on so many millions of people both within and without their borders.
In the meantime i hope it rains.
rayiner
Iran isn’t a breadbasket exactly, but it has more arable land per person than Germany, Italy, the UK, or Ireland. And vastly more than Japan. It’s relatively temperate now—future warming doesn’t explain its current situation. On top of all that, it has oil! In 1980, just after the revolution, Iran had a PPP GDP per capita above Taiwan, China, and South Korea. And only modestly behind Poland. Today those countries are far ahead. Same for Thailand, Malaysia, and Turkey.
The economic sanctions are a symptom not the cause.
alephnerd
Not just PPP.
It's nominal GDP per capita was above Taiwan, Turkiye, South Korea, and all of Eastern Europe.
If none of the stuff that happened to Iran in our timeline didn't happened in the 1980s-2000s, it probably could have seen an economic boom comparable to what SK and Taiwan saw in the 1990s - especially becuase the leadership in 1980s South Korea and Taiwan were equally as authoritarian as that in Iran back then.
cm2012
"economic attack by sanction, cyber attack on energy infrastructure, and lately even kinetic attack from neighbors."
They could just stop being at war with Israel any time, it is a pointless choice.
xenospn
Almost everything you’ve described, except for natural disasters, is an own goal. There’s literally no need for the country to be poor and on the brink of collapse. They are doing it to themselves.
Blackthorn
Gee, I wonder what possibly could have happened over the last 50 or so years that might have damaged their prosperity.
culi
Well it's the most heavily sanctioned country on earth...
mattmaroon
Their government spends itself into poverty fighting proxy wars against Israel both directly and indirectly through sanctions. It’s a theocracy so economics is not the most important thing to their leaders.
jeromegv
Sanctions surely aren’t helping
bawolff
The situation the article is about seems more to do with corruption and mismanagement than sanctions.
elcritch
It's hard to manage a water supply and economy in Tehran when your top minds are busy running proxy wars in Lebanon and Iraq and funding or supporting ones in Syria, Yemen, and Gaza [1, 2].
It's sad to such a great people subjugated by their government.
1: https://www.cfr.org/article/irans-regional-armed-network 2: https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/proxy-wars/map
FridayoLeary
I wonder what happened...
It is a crying shame and the Iranians deserve better. At the moment 16 million people may find themselves without water in the near future. I'm lost for words.
If one positive thing could be found in this situation it might finally be the thing that brings down the regime. I think it's fair to say this year has been an annus horribilis for them.
mhb
I suspect that the IRGC will be the last ones with empty canteens.
FridayoLeary
They will still be empty eventually. It might still become a stable situation though. If you look at pictures from North Korea the only person who doesn't look malnourished is Kim Jong Un. Otoh water is different from food. Also it's the middle east. They might have to cut back on their aggression but their antagonists (who by now is literally everyone) won't.
jojobas
It's all British/American fault. /s
bamboozled
They are governed by Islamic fundamentalists ?
tgma
They were so ahead of their times compared to NYC they let Islamo-Marxists take over in 1979 and this is the result. Oh well...
toomuchtodo
pinewurst
"These (IRGC and government) privileged neighborhoods maintain numerous private swimming pools and spacious green spaces."
notepad0x90
Iran isn't that far from the Caspian. Is it not possible to develop a desalination plant?
Nearby Israel has desalination plants that seem to be working out well.
bawolff
Not in the course of the next few weeks.
This situation was avoidable but it required investment years ago. Kind of too late now.
jojobas
Pipes to quench a 10-million city through 100 kms of mountains (140km by road), going up 2 kms from the sea level? That's more than Israel's max distance from the sea (and it's mostly flat).
FridayoLeary
I'm ignorant but aren't oil pipelines much longer? They don't need to traverse mountain ranges but still. Either way i can't imagine such a project would be possible in an emergency time scale without the combined assistance of the US, Israel (desalination experts) and China. i know absolutely nothing about these things, so i don't know if it's even theoretically possible with their help.
jojobas
Apparently the highest oil pipeline throughput (Druzhba) is 1.4 million barrels per day, which amounts to some 2000 liters per second. That would be 20 liters/person/day - kinda maybe enough to move the needle, but not quite. Building this sort of pipeline today is about $1-2M per km on flat land. I'm not aware of comparable pipelines in the mountains.
Then, desalination requires energy, and Iran already faces blackouts here and there, there just isn't much spare capacity.
ceejayoz
In a year, with massive sanctions, for this many people? No. Not a chance.
Arubis
I cannot imagine the logistical nightmare of evacuating a metro area with 16 million people. Where do they go? Where has sufficient water to slake the thirst of that many?
bobthepanda
it would be one of the largest sudden migrations of people in history.
to put this in perspective, 13M people fled during the Syrian Civil War. 5.7M people fled Ukraine. The evacuation of New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina was 1.2M people.
elcritch
Never under estimate China. AP News says China expected 270M cross region trips during the Chinese new year this year. Likely with millions out of Beijing alone by itself for this yearly event over 2 weeks.
mensetmanusman
Is their geography able to emulate what Africa has done with off grid pumps?
Perhaps if they had put more resources toward maintaining their water infrastructure instead of spending on their nuclear arms ambitions, funding Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, etc., they might not have had this problem.