Residents of Tehran may be forced to evacuate in response to an unprecedented drought in Iran, after record low levels of rainfall left reservoirs empty.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has told Iranian citizens that if rainfall remains scarce, they may be forced to ration water.
The forecast looks bleak across the country, with no rainfall expected over the next 10 days.
Iran’s minister of energy, Abbas Ali Abadi, has warned that authorities may soon be forced to cut off the water supply. He said water flow may be “decreased to zero” on some nights, while households and business could be penalised for consuming too much water, the BBC reported.
Mr Pezeshkian’s statement sparked criticism from Iranian newspapers and on social media. The former mayor of Tehran, Gholamhossein Karbaschi, said that “evacuating Tehran makes no sense at all” and called the idea a “joke”.
Iran is enduring nationwide water shortages, with 19 major dams – accounting for about 10 per cent of the country’s reservoirs – running dry, according to the Iran Water Resources Management Company. More than 16 million people in the country are in danger of being without water, while local officials have said that rainfall in the capital is at its lowest level in a century.
The manager of the Latian dam, one of Tehran’s main water sources, said that it currently holds less than 10 per cent of its capacity.
Mr Ali Abadi told the BBC that the water crisis is not just a result of decreased rainfall, but also due to water leakage from the capital’s century-old water infrastructure.
The minister also referenced the 12-day war with Israel, during which Israel targeted Tajrish, a northern district of Tehran, with strikes that are believed to have led to heavy flooding. The IDF claimed it had targeted Iranian military “command centres”.
The nearby Karaj Dam is only 8 per cent full, following a 92 per cent decrease in rainfall compared with last year. Mohammad-Ali Moallem, the reservoir manager, said most of the water is unusable.
Water levels have also plunged below 3 per cent at dams in Mashhad in the northeast – the second-largest city by population – according to local reports.
The CEO of the city’s water company, Hossein Esmaeilian, told The Guardian: “The current situation shows that managing water use is no longer merely a recommendation – it has become a necessity.”
Mr Esmaeilian said consumption in the city had reached about “8,000 litres per second, of which about 1,000 to 1,500 litres per second is supplied from the dams”, and urged citizens to reduce their consumption by 20 per cent to avoid the supply being cut off.
Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has warned of a looming water crisis since 2011, but the situation has since worsened.
