Iran’s history stretches back millennia, but the country now faces an existential crisis unlike any in its past. Today, it’s not foreign armies at the gates or economic sanctions that threaten the nation’s cohesion. It’s thirst.
Across the country, rivers are vanishing, reservoirs collapsing, and dust storms swallow once bustling cities. Where water once flowed, empty jugs and anxious families now line the streets, hostages to a government far more interested in broadcasting its regional military might than in safeguarding its citizens’ basic needs.
The Islamic Republic has built its reputation on resistance – resistance to the West, to Israel, and to outside influence. But the real adversary is of its own making.
Iran’s water catastrophe isn’t some act of God or a mysterious shift in the climate.
It’s the result of decades of disastrous decisions, damming rivers for political gain, mismanaging agriculture, allowing unchecked drilling of aquifers, and treating environmental stewardship as an inconvenience to be repressed, not a priority to be protected.
Mismanagement becomes a national crisis
To this day, the regime’s priorities are plain: money for the IRGC, support for militias abroad to destroy Israel and project power, and grand gestures of defiance to the world. Environmental collapse, happening in plain sight, gets little more than blame-shifting, denials, and crackdowns on anyone brave enough to document the truth.
The result is a country that finds the cash for rockets in Lebanon but can’t keep Lake Urmia, the largest in the Middle East, from vanishing. A state that hails advances in nuclear technology but can’t supply drinking water to its own rural hinterlands.
It’s malpractice on a grand scale that’s getting worse. In small towns and sprawling cities alike, the effects are visible. There are dried-up wells, abandoned villages, and ancient rivers that are now nothing but memory. Dust storms, fed by the failed dams and disappearing wetlands, choke Tehran’s skyline. The capital itself faces water rationing, once unthinkable for a metropolis of its size.
The government claims “foreign conspiracies” are to blame, but ordinary Iranians know better. They see failures every day, and they know this crisis was made in Tehran.
Those failures are starting to test the regime’s foundations. When Khuzestan erupted in protest over water shortages in 2021, the regime’s answer sounded all too familiar: riot police, arrests, and “enemy” scapegoats. But you can’t intimidate a parent into accepting an empty glass for their child. Courts and batons can enforce only so much before trust runs dry.
There’s another, much broader danger brewing. As Iran’s countryside becomes unlivable, millions may be forced to migrate across borders or into the already strained cities. We know from Syria’s unraveling that ecological collapse can spark humanitarian crises and fuel regional instability.
Yet Iran is larger, and its instability would echo even further. A regime that weaponizes scarcity by cutting off water to restive provinces, punishing minorities in Khuzestan, Kurdistan, and Sistan-Baluchestan with calculated neglect will only fan the flames of unrest.
Tehran’s typical reflex is to lash outward, providing more weapons to proxies, more brinkmanship over enrichment, and more attempts to shift blame abroad. This is not a contained crisis. It’s a regional security threat in the making, a crisis that no neighbor, including Israel and Europe, can afford to ignore.
Iran needs support
The world isn’t powerless. There are ways to expose the regime’s negligence and help Iranians caught in the crossfire.
Sanction engineering firms and political patrons tied to ecosystem destruction. Shed daylight on satellite images, scientific analyses, and leaked documents that reveal the true causes of the collapse. Support Iran’s environmental experts, many of whom have been silenced or jailed for telling the truth about what’s happening. None of these is interference. It is basic decency.
Now, more than ever, Iranians need support. Western states, Israel (yes, Israel), and regional partners should offer transparent technical assistance, irrigation know-how, help reporting leaks, and new ways to manage the drought. However, not a dollar should be spent without full public oversight. If Tehran refuses, let it stand as proof of where the regime’s loyalties lie.
The Islamic Republic likes to claim it is defending Iran’s dignity. But dignity means nothing if a child cannot drink or a farmer cannot raise crops. A government that lets a nation go thirsty abandons any pretense of legitimacy on the world stage. Iran’s water crisis is no accident. It’s the logical outcome of political control, raw mismanagement, and willful neglect.
The international communal response must be clear and unwavering. The Iranian people deserve better than this slow-burn disaster. They shouldn’t have to pay for their leadership mistakes with empty wells and emptied futures. If this regime won’t act, then the world should, and quickly, before the thirst that’s tearing through Iran today spreads past its borders, with consequences no one will be able to ignore.
Dr. Michael J. Salamon is a psychologist specializing in trauma and abuse and director of ADC Psychological Services in Netanya and Hewlett, NY. Louis Libin is an expert in military strategies, wireless innovation, emergency communications, and cybersecurity.