Iran is staring down a water crisis so severe that its president just floated the unthinkable: evacuating Tehran, a sprawling capital of roughly 10 million people. The reservoirs supplying the city have been reduced to days worth of drinking water, and without rain or drastic rationing, the taps could run completely dry.

Reservoirs on Life Support

"Even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all. They (citizens) have to evacuate Tehran," President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Nov. 6. Local reports suggest the capital's reservoirs currently hold about nine days of drinking water at normal consumption levels.

The numbers are grim. Tehran depends on five main dams, whose combined storage has dropped to roughly half of typical levels. The Amir Kabir reservoir, a critical water source, sits at about 8% of capacity. And this isn't just a Tehran problem. Across Iran, 19 major dams representing around 10% of the country's total have effectively dried up. Water reserves for Mashhad, a holy city of about 4 million, have plunged below 3%.

More Than Just a Drought

Five years of brutal drought deserve some blame, but officials and experts agree that rainfall alone doesn't explain the emergency. Pezeshkian's administration points to "policies of past governments, climate change and over-consumption." Critics go further, citing decades of mismanagement that includes building too many dams, tolerating illegal wells, and allowing agriculture to devour roughly 80 to 90% of the nation's water through wildly inefficient irrigation practices.

Back in July, the president warned residents to stop wasting water. Authorities reported that about 70% of Tehran's population uses more than the standard 130 liters per day.

Political Powder Keg

So far, there haven't been major protests over the current shortages, but the government knows the risk. Water scarcity triggered violent demonstrations in Khuzestan province in 2021, and rural unrest erupted in 2018 when farmers accused officials of diverting and botching water supplies.

The timing couldn't be worse. Many Iranians are already struggling under an economy hammered by U.S. sanctions and recent strikes on nuclear facilities, even as Tehran maintains it's not pursuing atomic weapons.

Iran's National Water and Wastewater Company has denied implementing formal rationing, but confirmed that water pressure is being reduced overnight and can drop to zero in some neighborhoods. When you're parsing the difference between "rationing" and "pressure reductions to zero," the semantic distinction probably doesn't matter much to residents watching their faucets sputter.