The water crisis in Iran is becoming more acute day by day. Iran is currently facing one of the most serious water shortages in its history. This crisis not only threatens the supply of drinking water for citizens, but also affects agriculture, industry, and the environment.
Iran is located in the arid belt of the world, with an average annual rainfall of about 250 millimeters, less than one-third of the global average (800 millimeters). This natural shortage of rainfall forms the basis of the country’s water problems. Moreover, in recent years, Iran has experienced prolonged droughts that have reduced both surface and groundwater resources. It’s not just the dams that have run dry, and it’s not only Tehran province that is facing severe water shortages; overall, in many regions of Iran, groundwater levels have dropped, and the country’s plains are facing subsidence.
However, the fact that Iran’s geography places it in the dry belt of the world does not mean that the society is doomed to a dead end in solving the water problem and must constantly look to the sky for help. In today’s world with astonishing advances in science and technology and in a country that, although low in rainfall, sits atop a sea of underground wealth, the water issue can easily be resolved with proper management and scientific policymaking across various fields.
It is clear that water scarcity affects all aspects of life and makes life harder for the majority of the Iranian population, especially the workers and the working class in both cities and villages. The low level of technology used in agriculture prevents more efficient use of the limited available water. For example, in a country like the Netherlands, an average of 4 liters of water is used to produce one kilogram of tomatoes, while in Iran this figure averages 40 liters. Due to the water shortage, agricultural production decreases. With the drop in agricultural output, the prices of basic food items which are already expensive will quickly rise. The decline in agricultural production means lower income for farmers, increased unemployment in rural areas, and one of the first consequences will be migration to cities. However, cities are not capable of accommodating this wave of migration, inevitably leading to the expansion of informal settlements. Additionally, many industries are dependent on water consumption; as water resources diminish, production costs rise and some industrial units may even shut down. As a result, there will be fewer job opportunities in cities for migrants, and the unemployment rate will increase. Alongside all these factors, the lack of a culture of water conservation must also be mentioned.
Iran’s water crisis is the product of the intersection of various natural, human, economic, and social factors. However, among all these factors, the regime’s agents cite only two reasons for water scarcity: first, the decrease in rainfall; and second, excessive water consumption in agriculture. While both are real, they represent only part of the truth. They completely ignore the most critical factor in the water shortage: the institutionalized corruption within the regime’s organizations. Regarding the first reason, one must ask: who, through incompetence and profiteering, has caused the lack of rainfall to expose Iran to such a severe water shortage? Numerous elements have played a role in this process, and human factors can be seen behind all of them.
One such factor is the overarching policy of agricultural self-sufficiency, implemented without considering its side effects and related variables, to the extent that 90% of Iran’s water is consumed in agriculture. The result of this policy has been the excessive depletion of groundwater, which has not been replenished even by rainfall. According to government statistics, nearly one million wells exist in Iran, 758,000 of which have been dug during the Islamic Republic’s rule. Among these, more than 200,000 wells lack any license or permit, most of them are for the use of private villas and recreational gardens owned by the wealthy and capitalists scattered across Iran.
Water loss in transmission and distribution networks due to worn-out pipes and infrastructure, according to government sources, leads to the disappearance of up to 40% of the water in urban pipeline systems in some areas and no effort is made to repair the pipes. The limited use of modern irrigation methods, such as drip irrigation in agriculture, the lack of investment in water recycling technologies, incompetence, poorly planned projects, industrial mafias, the IRGC’s rent-seeking, and entrenched corruption in government agencies have all combined to cause irreversible damage to natural water sources. The following examples illustrate this: the largest industrial water factories in the Middle East were not built on the southern sea coasts, but in the central plateau and in the desert, developed using water transferred from the Karun River. The Gotvand Dam in southern Iran, in addition to its enormous construction cost, dissolved millions of cubic meters of salt from the surrounding mountains into its reservoir and turned thousands of hectares of the most fertile farmland behind the dam into salt flats.
The reality is that as long as the capitalist Islamic Republic regime remains in power and continues to hold people’s bread, jobs, housing, freedom, and environment hostage, there is no prospect for solving such problems that plague the majority of Iran’s population. The corrupt administrative apparatus fostered by this regime is incapable of dealing with natural disasters like drought, or of addressing the root and structural causes of water shortages. For this regime, the priority has always been to suppress the people’s struggles for equality and freedom and to imprison dissidents. This regime will never meet any demands unless it feels a serious threat from the people. Iran sits atop a sea of natural wealth. If political power were to fall into the rightful and capable hands of workers and councils born of the people’s free will, then in such a country with such immense wealth and an inexhaustibly creative labor force, there is no doubt that the problems which have so devastated the lives of the majority today will be resolved.
