Scott N. Romaniuk & Erzsébet N. Rózsa & László Csicsmann
Iran is confronting an unprecedented water crisis. Rivers that have sustained settlements and agriculture for centuries are drying, while groundwater reserves are being extracted far beyond natural replenishment—over 70% of major aquifers are considered overdrawn. According to Isa Bozorgzadeh, spokesperson for Iran’s water industry, many plains and reservoirs have reached critically low levels. Over the past two decades, the country’s renewable water resources have declined by more than a third, pushing Iran to the brink of absolute water scarcity.
Drought cycles are becoming more frequent and severe; this past autumn marked one of the driest periods in the last 20 years in contemporary Iranian history. For decades, national development policies assumed that engineering and extraction could overcome environmental limits. Today, those limits are reasserting themselves, and shortages are moving from rural peripheries into major cities, placing pressure on a political system already managing numerous economic, social, and national security challenges. Rising scarcity underscores the multifaceted ways in which water intersects with livelihoods, public trust, and national security, creating pressures that extend from rural communities to urban centers and shaping Iran’s domestic and regional policies.
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