As Tehran endures its sixth consecutive year of drought, water reserves in the capital have fallen to their lowest levels in six decades, prompting rare warnings from senior officials about possible water rationing — and even a future evacuation of the city.
Two environmental experts told Donya-e-Eqtesad that Iran’s capital now faces an “extraordinary” water crisis and outlined four emergency measures they say could help Tehran survive until the rainy season: maximum conservation, temporary well drilling around the city, recovery of lost water in the network, and reuse of greywater.
The water deficit has reached a critical point. According to the Tehran Water and Wastewater Company, rainfall in the province dropped to 159 millimeters in the last water year — the lowest in a century. For two consecutive months, October and November, not a single millimeter of rain was recorded, compared with a long-term average of 30 millimeters. With storage levels at Tehran’s five main dams below 5% of capacity, President Masoud Pezeshkian has cautioned that rationing could begin as early as December.
Ali Beitollahi, a senior disaster-risk expert at the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, said the crisis demands “immediate and unconventional measures.” He urged both residents and the government to reduce consumption across all sectors and to divert some agricultural wells around Tehran into the urban supply system after proper treatment. While such measures are typically undesirable, he said they are now unavoidable to prevent systemic collapse.
Beitollahi added that calls to “evacuate Tehran” should be understood as political warnings, not policy options. “Moving a population of 10–15 million people is simply impossible,” he said, noting that most other provinces are also suffering from drought. Nineteen provinces have reported “zero rainfall” so far this fall. Relocating millions would merely shift the problem elsewhere.
He described the national water situation as “beyond critical,” arguing that population concentration in a handful of megacities has overwhelmed the ecological capacity of local resources. More than 40% of Iranians now live in just ten urban clusters, a pattern he said reflects the failure to distribute jobs and economic opportunities evenly across the country.
The Case for “Wise Water”
Mohammadreza Farzaneh, a climate-change researcher and faculty member at the Research Institute for Environment and Sustainable Development, argued that Tehran’s water crisis is both physical and institutional. “Iran’s water governance remains trapped in a supply-oriented mindset,” he said, calling for a transition toward an integrated water management model that aligns economic growth, social justice, and environmental sustainability.
Farzaneh noted that short-term measures should include repairing leaks and aging pipelines, installing low-flow devices, and expanding the use of greywater for urban landscaping and non-potable purposes. However, he cautioned that such measures can only buy time. Without structural reforms — including data transparency, citizen participation, and coordination among state agencies — technical fixes will fail to restore sustainability.
According to Farzaneh, Tehran’s challenge is not merely to survive the next few months but to reimagine how it manages water in a changing climate. The “wise water” approach, he said, depends on shifting from engineering solutions toward governance-based strategies, where public awareness, institutional accountability, and cross-sector collaboration become the core of resilience.
Both experts agree that Tehran’s path forward lies not in “evacuation,” but in urgent adaptation — a combination of emergency conservation, decentralized water use, and long-term reform. Unless the capital adopts this pragmatic mix, its slide toward an irreversible water collapse may only accelerate.
