SHLOMO BEN-AMI
Countries across the Middle East are facing acute water shortages, owing to poor resource management, accelerating climate change, and regional power politics. In the absence of concerted diplomacy, water will soon be another flash point in a chronically unstable region.
TEL AVIV – In early November, as Iran’s years-long drought reached an intensity “unprecedented in modern times,” crowds of worshippers gathered at a mosque in Tehran and tilted their faces upward, pleading for rain. But no amount of prayer – in Iran or anywhere else – can offset an entrenched culture of water mismanagement against a backdrop of accelerating climate change.
Iran has a long history of irresponsible dam-building practices, ineffective urban planning, excessive subsidies, and resistance to technological upgrading. Add to that desertification resulting from drought, deforestation, and unsustainable agricultural practices, and it is no wonder that water has emerged as a major risk factor for the country.
Six consecutive years of severe drought have now turned Iran’s water vulnerability into an acute crisis. The reservoirs on which Tehran depends have reached critically low levels, creating a crisis so severe that President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned that the metropolitan area’s 15 million residents may need to evacuate. And it is not just Tehran: about 10% of Iran’s dams have run dry.
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