Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites
77 comments
·November 16, 2025TheAceOfHearts
Earlier today I watched a video[0] that helped contextualize the water situation in Iran. The key takeaway for me was that Iran has been rapidly depleting their water reserves and they don't have any ways to quickly refill them, nor do they have treaties with neighboring countries to guarantee water. That video doesn't mention cloud seeding at all.
How should we think about cloud seeding? Does this technology actually move the needle at all on Iran's water needs or is this just some dubious marketing campaign?
unwise-exe
>>> How should we think about cloud seeding?
It's a way to take someone else's rain.
perhonen
who owns the rain? what if it was just going to fall in the oceans?
londons_explore
Less rain than you'd imagine falls on the oceans, due to the land having varying elevation and temperature, whilst the oceans have far more constant elevation and temperature so the conditions needed for rain happen less.
barbazoo
We’ll find out soon. Whoever is “taking” the rain is the one that owns it is my guess.
a2tech
I assume marketing. I’m wondering what will happen when they force the afghan refugees back over the border into Afghanistan since they don’t have the water to give them.
Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival.
londons_explore
Drinking water is such a tiny proportion of total water use that it is essentially irrelevant.
Water for farming and power stations are the things that will be hit first.
ants_everywhere
> Climate change and bad decisions from the last 50 years are starting to bite now. It’ll just get worse. Expect migrations and countries collapsing as millions of people are pushed to migrate for survival.
For those unfamiliar, climate change and drought are believed to be one of the major causes of the bronze age civilization collapse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#Droug...
waps
[dead]
yard2010
[flagged]
matt_kantor
Why not both? I'm no expert, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Iran (and its sources) indicate that climate change is part of the problem.
ceejayoz
> using the water to fight a war
Look, I know they didn’t fare well against Israeli F-35s and American B-2s, but the tech disparity isn’t quite as bad as them using Super Soakers for air defense.
Ten million civilians are about to deeply suffer. A multi-year drought is a key contributor.
cyanydeez
Cloud seeding is real, buf unpredictable. Youre trying to get moisture to coalesce around the "seed" then fall where you want it.
The dubious part is the coditions to rain are chaotic patameters and unpredictable.
conspiracythery
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107328
Right, the chance of it working is 0-20% in some tests and found to be highy conditional. I’m in support of them trying something to help, but it’s not a silver bullet (though it is silver iodide).
rjzzleep
One of Iran's biggest problems is that Iran, for no good reason other than the benefit of some big corporations (kinda similar to the California situation) is one of the biggest produce and dry fruit exporter in the world, and that one thing the government would need to do is shut down that excess capacity. A thing very few countries would do because it would punish some oligarch for the benefit of the whole of society.
bad_haircut72
Its obviously not as dire (yet) but I think Texas will face something like this in the coming decades. Its the kind of problem that requires people at all levels of society to cooperate and sacrifice - farmers & businesses need to draw less, people need to use less and government needs intelligent and actionable policy, plus big investment into unsexy and invisble infrastructure upgrades - so basically we're screwed.
mattmaroon
The American Southwest needs to get started on desalination. It’s the only long term answer we have now, know works, and is at least within shooting distance of cost-feasible.
Retric
If you own water rights, selling them to a city at near desalination rates is way more profitable than farming.
So desalination only makes economic sense after removing all farms from an area.
mattmaroon
Well, if you’re selling the water at rates that aren’t below cost farms will remove themselves. Desalination is cheap enough for humans to live and do most work things, it’s hard to imagine it ever being cheap enough for farming.
TimorousBestie
The southwest, for the most part, refuses to accept the federal funding & infrastructure support that would be necessary for desalination at scale to be feasible.
Nobody wants to vote for water rationing, and the state can’t even enforce consumption limits against corporations and the wealthy.
treis
People use very little water. Most of what is drawn is returned back to the system. By that I mean if you use 20 gallons for a shower 19 is going into the drain to be reused.
The only real usage of water is evaporation and that's stuff like growing plants and cooling towers.
vorpalhex
Texas is either desert or desert adjacent. We have always gotten our water by having torrential rains inconsistently.
This doesn't mean don't conserve, be intelligent, etc.
But this does mean that your water won't "balance out" year to year, you need to look at big 25-30 year intervals.
Right now the single biggest waste of water in Austin is leaky pipes. Like infrastructure pipes owned by the city. Meanwhile our water conservation budget is going to billboards telling people to rush in the shower. The entire population could stop bathing and not reduce enough to make up for the leaks happening in the crumbling water infra.
jkmcf
We have similar problems in Colorado re: pipes leaking. People don't want to pay the full cost of water, which includes supporting infrastructure. Municipalities are caught between these unfunded costs and taxpayers refusing to pay 1¢ more. I believe the utilities require political approval to raise rates, so that doesn't happen either.
martinpw
> We have always gotten our water by having torrential rains inconsistently
I think OP is talking more about groundwater depletion:
https://abc7amarillo.com/news/local/panhandle-runs-on-water-...
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BolexNOLA
I can’t imagine the various legislatures in several “highly skeptical” states that are either considering or have already implemented “no chemtrails” and fluoride laws are going to find it easy to convince people to allow cloud seeding. Pretty sure Tennessee already preemptively banned it.
Redster
Yes, TN did pass that. Much of TN (especially around the capital) is temperate rainforest, so I imagine the lawmakers perceived downsides, but not upsides. Unfortunately, there is conflation or confusion between cloudseeding and sunlight reflection methods.
I hope to see this legislation in TN changed to allow cloudseeding.
bad_haircut72
Most of that idiotic crap goes out the window when real problems show up. I do believe Texans will get the same "pray for rain" BS we're laughing at Iran for now though.
rectang
Those of us who live in other states also have to prepare for the refugees fleeing ruined lands who will bring their destructive ideology with them.
bombcar
It’s so lucky that even though refugees from other states bring negative consequences at least refugees from other countries don’t.
latchkey
How would you prepare?
rectang
I think the first step is to develop a "we're not Texas" culture. Observe the ways in which Texas is ruining its environment and deliberately, conspicuously do something else.
For example, the aquifer situation in the Central Valley of California is in some ways similar to Ogallala aquifer in Texas. "If we don't want to end up like Texas, we need to get a handle on this." Enact laws and conservation measures which make it difficult for those coming from out of state to bring their ecologically irresponsible practices with them. Ideally, reduce the ecological impact wrought by well-established California interests as well, but if necessary grandfather them in in order to prepare.
sva_
Ironic that Iran is an anagram for rain. If only they built water reservoirs or other infrastructure instead of trying to build nukes, or drones that kill innocent people in Ukraine.
nashashmi
It was not reservoirs but lack of rain that led to their problems. Now if only you had reduced your emissions they would not have this problem. I’m glad you care for them so much
energy123
This is quite a distortion of the facts to push an agenda.
Desalination technology can solve their problems completely, but they armed proxies that attacked the two countries in the region (Saudi Arabia and Israel) that can help them.
They also imprisoned the one qualified guy in their country who blew the whistle on their water mismanagement (e.g. farming water intensive crops in a desert), Dr. Madani.
You could read the Wikipedia page to learn the other man-made reasons behind this crisis. That's preferable than coming here to play defense for a corrupt theocracy. Not that I doubt that climate change is one of the causes.
merely-unlikely
“If only you had reduced your emissions one of the top 10 largest oil producing countries in the world would not have this problem.”
ETA: China imports 40% of Iranian oil production followed by Iraq, UAE, and Turkey.
rjzzleep
They're building nukes? Awesome, looks like you have more information than the IAEA. Unless of course you're talking about the same Ayatollah bomb that Iran almost has since 1984[1].
The drones are produced by Russia btw. You know, kinda how you guys keep saying that you'll punish China for supplying components for them. Meanwhile every single drone that Ukraine uses is built with either Chinese components or is a modded Chinese drone to begin with.
[1] https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/04/24/Ayatollah-bomb-in-pr...
dmix
I don’t think Iran is hiding the fact they are building nuclear weapon tech and long range ballistic missiles capable of MIRV.
People dismissed North Korea’s ability to do so for a long time. They thought they were too poor and isolated.
energy123
Israel also said Pakistan was trying to build nukes, but they were stopped by the Indian PM in the 1980s from launching a preventive attack.
The silver lining is that we don't have to suffer the internet commentators saying "Pakistan has been weeks away from nukes for fifty years!"
You can choose to put your head in the sand about a theocracy that enriches uranium to 60%, holds up mushroom clouds in their protests, and repeatedly violated the NPT with clandestine facilities. Others won't be so naive.
Thlom
Iran can of course build a nuke in a relatively short timespan if they want to, but for a range of reason they have made the decision not to. Perhaps they should have built a nuke, if they had one Israel and the US wouldn't have bombed them.
incrudible
When you build all the technology needed to actually build a nuke, when you enrich uranium to near weapons-grade, but you never actually assemble the nuke, are you trying to building a nuke? Or are just messing with everyone, trying to make them think you're building a nuke when you're totally not building a nuke (pinkie promise)?
Either way, if you are threatening to annihilate another country, I wouldn't gamble on the latter.
inglor_cz
Iran is the "principal-agent" problem embodied.
The governing mullahs' interests are brutally divergent from those of the people in whose name they pretend to govern.
Hence, the nuclear weapons program and all the cozying up to Russia.
CGMthrowaway
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energy123
The civilian nuclear program. Not the enrich to 60% and build secret underground enrichment facilities in violation of the NPT -- for no reason whatsoever, I am assured -- nuclear program.
nozzlegear
> There are innocent people being killed (15K+) on both sides of the Ukraine conflict.
But it's more than a little lopsided, and there's only one aggressor in the war – one who could choose to end it at any time.
appreciatorBus
Regardless of when it was initiated or by who, the current regime is who has the power to end it today.
paxys
Has this ever been proven to actually work?
BurningFrog
It can make existing moisture in the air fall as rain where you want it to. Like over a water reservoir.
But it obviously can't create more moisture than already is in the air.
drewmate
Apparently there are companies trying similar things in the US - https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2025/11/13/cloud-seedin...
First I'd heard of it... though Salt Lake City did just have its rainiest October on record.
Marsymars
It works to e.g. prompt hail to fall outside of cities rather than directly onto cities.
gus_massa
I think it's used in Mendoza (Argentina). They have very clean air, and sometimes they get big hailstorm the size of a gold ball. With the seeds, they get instead a lot of small ice crystals that (mostly?) melt while falling and are not harmful for people or farms. IIUC it's the same amount of water in the same place, but in a friendlier formfactor.
UebVar
No, and explanations on how it could work are implausible.
thepratt
Dubai has an entire active operation. It looks like it does work, but how well is debated. Seems to have enough of an impact (correlation or causation) that they haven't shut it down yet.
malfist
Governments spending money on something doesn't mean it works. Bridges to nowhere are totally a thing
meindnoch
Yeah, because Dubai is known for their prudent financials. Lol.
adgjlsfhk1
the U.S did experiments in Vietnam that were fairly promising back in the 70s
CapitalistCartr
Operation Popeye
testing22321
Sure. Ski resorts in Utah do it all the time to make it snow.
WhereIsTheTruth
The UAE has partnered with the US and NASA on cloud seeding research, and the US has been doing it for decades
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/18/united-arab-emirates-is-usin...
DANmode
The Chinese pretty blatantly used it to tailor things for their Olympics.
I’m a little surprised how this has gone under the radar,
considering the black box “effing with the weather cycles” truly is.
trescenzi
I occasionally see headlines like this and imagine them as part of an opening montage in a movie setting the scene for why society is dystopian/collapsed. Not that I have anything against cloud seeding, more that individually "X climate mitigation effort begins" headlines seem small and isolated but when taken together they start to become foreboding. We're not there yet but that's the point. Only when looking back will it become clear that taken in their totality we'll have a little map that shows us how we ended up somewhere.
calebm
"Cloud seeding involves spraying particles such as silver iodide and salt into clouds from aircraft to trigger rain." So... chemtrails?
giggyhack
Weather modification has been a well understood, but not particularly effective program that has been run in various places across the US for decades. The main difference with chemtrails is that those are a bunch of nonsense conspiracy theories that assume that the government is trying to do widespread mind control. Weather modification is just trying to get it rain to rain a tiny bit more, with limited success.
https://library.noaa.gov/weather-climate/weather-modificatio...
dmix
Israel tried cloud seeding for decades and gave up after not being happy with the results https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/62/3/JAMC-D-...
China also had a big program. They tried to create rain for the Beijing olympics
lithocarpus
Really?
All this time the chemtrail people I know have been talking about weather control, I hadn't heard of mind control being part of it.
My take has been yeah I know cloud seeding and solar geoenhineering is real, ergo some amount of chemtrails are "real" in that they are deliberate particulate being sprayed and not just water. While the thing the chemtrail people claim that seems dubious is the scale and other nuances - claiming that all contrails are chemtrails. It's the scale that we don't know and that I assume it's pretty small because it seems expensive and pointless to do it constantly. But I don't know how I could ascertain the scale at which it's done either.
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marshmallow_12
Discussion from last week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45871043
Iran is in a bad predicament. Largely self inflicted but that in no way diminishes from the horror of a looming humanitarian disaster.
yubblegum
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Ozzie_osman
> These miserable [A] and their idiot low iq followers have destroyed [B].
Careful with this statement, it might generalize more than you think over the next few years.
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yubblegum
The problem unfortunately is not unique to Iran or even a specific flavor of irrational, this is understood.
What is the deal with the image of the article ? Mosques are as empty in Iran as churches are empty in the west. Yes the government is tightly coupled with religion, but this image isn’t representative of Iran at all.