‘We may have to evacuate Tehran’: The catastrophe threatening Iran

“May God protect this country from the enemy, from drought, from lies.”

Thus prayed Darius the Great, the ancient Persian emperor, in an appeal to the heavens inscribed on the tomb in Persepolis where he was laid to rest more than 2,500 years ago.

The Islamic theocrats who run Iran today may not think much of Darius’s Zoroastrian God, but they have every reason to hope his prayer was heard. For, just months after surviving a punishing war with their own enemies, they are now facing a drought – made worse by their own lies – which could be more devastating than any Israeli or American bomb.

At the time of writing, Tehran’s reservoirs are estimated to hold just nine more days of drinking water. If it does not rain soon, president Masoud Pezeshkian has warned, the capital city – home to 10 million people – may have to be evacuated.

The crisis is national and extraordinary. In the northeastern city of Mashhad, the second largest in Iran, reservoirs are down to less than three per cent of capacity. In all, the energy ministry said on Tuesday, 19 of the country’s major dams are on the brink of running dry.

Archaeologists have even warned that the aquifer beneath Persepolis itself has been so thoroughly drained that the ancient city – Darius’s tomb and all – could soon collapse into the ground. The situation is now “beyond” a crisis, says Kaveh Madani, a former deputy head of Iran’s environment department. Both the “checking account” of rain-filled mountain reservoirs, and the “savings account” of groundwater, which has traditionally got the country through dry years, are exhausted.

Sanctions, street protests, and Israeli bombs: nothing seems to shake the Islamic Republic’s grip on power in Iran. But could nature bring it down?

The “serious and unimaginable crisis” facing Iran can only partly be blamed on rainfall dropping off 40 per cent year-on-year, Pezeshkian said in a press conference in August.

Thoughtless development has drained the aquifers, and Tehran has been allowed to grow so fast and so chaotically that its landscape simply cannot support the modern population, he argued. The capital’s institutions, he said, will have to move to another part of the country – probably the south. The vast civilian population possibly evacuated.

And worst of all, he complains, there is almost nothing that can be done about it. “Some people are going on TV and saying [the government has] the ability to do something,” a visibly angry Pezeshkian shouted in an address to Parliament on Tuesday. “If you really think you have the ability to fix it, I’ll hand over all the authority – come and fix it.”

He has been accused by some of scaremongering. Others point out that evacuating a city of 10 million people is probably impossible. But, say Iranian scientists, he is not wrong on either the scale nor the causes of the challenge.

“Now, we are in the sixth year of drought. Although I hoped that the sixth year would not be as dry as in the previous five years, a drought this long can paralyse any government anywhere in the world,” says Madani. “It’s a serious threat. During this time, Iran has had two governments with different policies. They decided to [store] water or release water.

“All those decisions are legacy decisions that, now, the administration of Pezeshkian needs to deal with. That’s why there is so much frustration. And unfortunately, at this point in time, there is no solution left except for emergency response and begging the citizens to consume less water or even leave the town to reduce their consumption.”

Rationing has already begun. Some universities have already shut off the showers in dormitories. Water authorities are talking about reducing water pressure to zero overnight. And almost inevitably, it is the poorer neighbourhoods who seem to be bearing the brunt of privations.

“Some nights the pressure is too low and water just drips from the taps. We are worried about it and don’t have any idea what to do if Tehran runs out of water,” says Siamak, a resident of Shush, a poor inner-city district. “We are not wasting the water, no one in our alley does. They should fix those leaks in the distribution system which would [solve] the problem – they themselves waste water.” His family have already bought buckets to store water if the taps dry up completely.

Residents in Tajrish and Niavaran – well-to-do districts in the north of Tehran – say the drop in pressure in the taps is so far barely noticeable. One local resident compares the shortage to years of reports about the drying up of Lake Urmia in Iran’s north-east; a distant problem seen only on the news.

Part of the problem is just the arrival of long-heralded climate change. Historically, Tehran has experienced no more than two consecutive years of drought per dry period, Mohsen Ardakani, the CEO of Tehran Province Water and Wastewater Company, told state TV on Saturday. This is its first five-year drought - so it is no wonder the capital’s dams are at “historic minimum”.