Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Fears of a reignited conflict are rising, even as the true cost of war is only beginning to be tallied. Alongside the thousands of deaths, the destruction of infrastructure, and the global economic costs, the war is exacerbating existing climate vulnerabilities and exposing the people of the region to an increasingly dangerous and nearly uninhabitable reality.
A combination of conflict and climate change has most acutely affected Iran and the broader Middle East and North Africa. Water is rationed, temperatures are breaking records, and droughts have been increasingly severe. Temperatures in the region are expected to rise by twice the global average during the 21st century. Syria, Libya, and Yemen have already endured civil wars and protracted humanitarian crises. Climate change and conflict share a complex, multidimensional relationship, each capable of exacerbating the other.
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Beyond targeted attacks on desalination plants, strikes against civilian and industrial infrastructure since war started—including strikes on oil facilities and chemical plants—have polluted the region’s already fragile waterways. As World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned, attacks on petroleum facilities in Iran at the outset of the war, including those targeting the Shahran oil depot and the Shahr-e Rey refinery in Tehran, risked “contaminating food, water, and air,” with potentially severe health consequences for children and the elderly.
The conflict is also deepening these vulnerabilities by diverting governments’ attention, capacity, and funding away from the climate resilience and adaptation investments their populations urgently need. The war has caused at least $58 billion in damage to energy infrastructure across the Gulf, and slashed tourism revenues by around $600 million a day since hostilities began. The result is regional governments left with fewer resources to adapt to the worsening climate crisis, including efforts to combat water scarcity.
Articles like this are a reminder of the profound ignorance of some sectors of the establishment media. They’re talking about Iran like it is a normal country, which takes the needs of their citizens seriously.
The reason Iran has a water crisis while other gulf states and Israel do not, is the current regime doesn’t care enough about water security to fix the problems. Their entire attention has been focussed on self enrichment and the destruction of Israel and the United States since the Iranian revolution.
Iran’s water crisis exposes collapse of the regime
Decades of corruption, mismanagement and misplaced nuclear priorities leave Tehran facing rationing, empty reservoirs and potential evacuation
Iran’s capital is now experiencing a massive and deepening water shortage. After months of drought and scorching heat, the five reservoirs feeding the city of more than 10 million are mostly empty. Local authorities have been forced to mandate water rationing, and the situation has become so dire that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian recently warned that, unless the region experiences rainfall in the coming weeks, the city may need to be evacuated altogether.
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The reasons have everything to do with the skewed priorities of Iran’s ruling clerical regime. True to their revolutionary pedigree, Iran’s ayatollahs have consistently preferred guns over butter. They have poured billions of dollars into the country’s nuclear program, its burgeoning arsenal of ballistic missiles and its extensive network of terrorist proxies.
What they have not done is make a meaningful, sustained nationwide effort to reverse the country’s worsening water situation. Now that the crisis has truly hit, Iranian officials are predictably trying to deflect the blame onto the Iranian people themselves.
The author of the following article is Nikahang Kowsar, a University of Tehran trained geologist who once stood for election as a reformist candidate for Tehran City Council, but currently lives in exile in the United States.
Grand Theft Hydrology: How Iran’s Water Mafia Engineered a Drought—Then Sent the Bill
Iran’s drought isn’t some angry weather god punishing us with a dry spell.
Enter the Water Mafia—a term I’ve been using for years, finally getting the attention it deserves after some recent geopolitical truth bombs. Imagine a cozy little cartel of IRGC contractors, consultants with magical impact assessments, ex-revolutionaries rebranded as “hydropolitical visionaries,” and a revolving door of Energy Ministry officials who always seem to retire in Dubai or Vancouver… right around the time the rivers disappear.
These folks don’t manage collapse—they monetize it. Every dried-up wetland, every cracked riverbed, every tanker-truck village is another invoice: signed, sealed, and cashed.
And here’s the real magic: even in wet years, there’s still a crisis. Why? Because they’ve already sucked the aquifers dry—and surprise, they’re not refilling. Iran’s water policy is basically looting the savings account and burning down the vault. What used to be underground reservoirs—nature’s emergency fund—is now either empty or, thanks to land subsidence, permanently damaged. Entire basins have collapsed like a Ponzi scheme in a sandstorm. You can’t store water in a sunken sponge.
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Let’s be clear: this isn’t just environmental collapse. It’s theft. It’s a crime scene. A slow-motion disaster that was warned1 about, predicted2, entirely preventable, and—most unforgivably—profitable.
The biggest threat to water security in Iran is the Iranian regime. They didn’t have to provoke Israel and the USA into attacking them. They didn’t have to turn a blind eye to corruption, so well connected thieves could loot what public water budget was available. Building more wind turbines in the West will not fix this hideous mess.
The Time article goes on to claim higher CO2 levels will make nations like Iran uninhabitable, but the evidence does not support this assertion.
During the Holocene Optimum, when sea level was significantly higher than today, and temperatures were likely significantly warmer than today, Iran was wet. Large parts of Iran experienced significant monsoonal rainfall.
A Late Pleistocene-Holocene multi-proxy record of climate variability in the Jazmurian playa, southeastern Iran
• Paleoenvironmental changes since the LGM in southeastern Iran were recorded in a sediment core from the Jazmurian playa
• The Indian Ocean Summer Monsoon and Mid-Latitude Westerlies impacted the landscape resulting in multiple wet and dry periods
• Precipitation changed from a monsoon-dominated regime to one influenced by the Mid-Latitude Westerlies during late-Holocene
• Paleoenvironmental changes in the playa are contemporaneous with other global and regional paleoclimatic studies
• The study facilitates further linkages between paleoenvironmental changes and advances in the history of human civilization
Abstract
We present a multi-proxy record from a 5-m long sediment core from the Jazmurian playa in southeastern Iran to provide insights into globally-recognized major climatic events since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). In particular, we examined how variability in the Indian Ocean Summer Monsoon (IOSM) and Mid-Latitude Westerlies (MLW) contribute to distinct environmental changes in this arid to hyper-arid region in the interior of West Asia. While interior West Asia showed cold windy conditions during the LGM and post-LGM, southeast Iran experienced quiescent conditions similar to south Asia. The presence of fine-grained sediments, low magnetic susceptibility, and a decrease in aeolian inputs from ca. 21 to 14 cal kyr BP, suggests that effects of both wind and precipitation were minimal during these quiescent conditions. Increased fluvial inputs, coupled with a low abundance of evaporite minerals in Jazmurian sediments, indicated a greater influence of the IOSM between 14 and 13.2 cal kyr BP. In contrast, the Jazmurian playa was dry and dusty between 13.2 and 11.4 cal kyr BP, as reflected by an increase in aeolian sands, and the presence of evaporite minerals. This was followed by a period of strong IOSM activity during the early Holocene, coinciding with higher fluvial input ca. 11.4 cal kyr BP. The early Holocene in southeast Iran was wetter than other analogs in south Asia because of inputs from both IOSM and MWL. Several intense dry periods with sharp increases in aeolian inputs occurred after the early Holocene, due to the southward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Precipitation sources changed from a monsoon-dominated regime to one influenced mainly by the MLW during the late-Holocene. These results show that palaeoenvironmental changes in the Jazmurian playa, located at the border of IOSM and MLW zones, were primarily governed by global and regional paleoclimatic changes.
My point is it’s an oversimplification to suggest warmer temperatures, even if significant further warming occurs, would simply lead to hotter and drier conditions. They could easily lead to wetter conditions, as was the case in the not so distant past.
In summary the most effective short term solution to fixing Iran’s “climate” problems is to get rid of the regime of corrupt incompetents whose maladministration of Iran’s public water systems created this mess. The current Iranian regime has never shown interest in taking water management seriously, and given their track record of using water availability as a coercive political lever, there is no reason to expect they will ever take a serious interest in providing water security for their people.
