Water reserves in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, the country’s second-largest city and a major religious center with around four million residents, have dropped below 3% of capacity, an Iranian water official said on Sunday.
“The water reserves of Mashhad’s dams have now dropped to below three percent, and although water consumption has somewhat decreased in the cold season, the current situation shows that consumption management is no longer just a recommendation, but an obligation,” managing director of the Mashhad Water and Wastewater Company, said in an interview with the state-affiliated Mehr News Agency.
“Total precipitation in Mashhad county has so far amounted to only 0.4 millimeters, while last year it was around 27 to 28 millimeters,” Hossein Esmaeilian added.
Esmaeilian said the exceptionally low rainfall highlights the worsening state of water resources across northeastern Iran.
Shifting responsibility onto the public
In recent weeks, as the water crisis has worsened, several Iranian officials have blamed the problem on public overconsumption, urging citizens to "pray for rain" and show greater "moral discipline."
Esmaeilian’s remarks came on the same day Iran’s energy minister, Abbas Aliabadi, announced nightly water cuts across the country and urged residents to install home water storage systems.
However, the cost of purchasing and installing home storage systems is beyond the reach of many Iranians, and earlier Iranian media reports said prices for the equipment have risen since the government urged the public to buy them.
Esmaeilian said the top priority now is for residents to save and manage water use to avoid supply disruptions over the next one to two months while hoping for rainfall later in the year.
He added that current water consumption in Mashhad stands at about 8,000 liters per second, of which only between 1,000 and 1,500 liters per second come from the dams.
He said that if residents could reduce their consumption by around 20 percent, it would be possible to manage the situation without water rationing or supply cuts.
Last week, Hassan Hosseini, deputy governor and special governor of Mashhad, said the government is reviewing a water rationing plan and that, if the drought continues, regional rationing will begin before the end of autumn.
Despite repeated warnings from experts over the years, Iran’s water management system has focused on building dams and drilling deep wells instead of investing in and maintaining infrastructure, often blaming the crisis solely on declining rainfall.
"No water rationing — the scheduled and announced distribution and supply of water on a rotating basis — has so far been implemented in Tehran or any other city in the country," the Revolutionary Guards-affiliated Fars News reported citing the National Water and Wastewater Company.
Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi on Sunday called the nightly pressure cuts a temporary management tool to stabilize the city’s aging water network and reduce leakage. Similar steps taken during the summer, he said, conserved significant volumes.
The measure, in effect from midnight until early morning, is designed to conserve supplies and reduce network losses, the spokesperson for Iran’s water industry, Issa Bozorgzadeh, said.
“We lower water pressure from midnight until around dawn to reduce urban leakage and allow reservoirs to refill,” he said.
The energy minister said on Saturday “Tehran's water pipeline system is more than 100 years old and worn-out."
"During the 12-day war (with Israel in June), the pipelines also suffered damage, which further added to the deterioration. We are sometimes forced to reduce water pressure to zero on certain nights.”
Residents report repeated disruptions
Households across eastern and northern Tehran have reported recurring water cuts and sharp pressure drops in recent nights, according to IRNA. Residents told the outlet that the disruptions have become routine. Many apartment buildings have installed small pumps and storage tanks to mitigate the problem, while others without such systems face hours-long outages.
Inflow to Tehran’s dams has dropped by 43 percent compared with the previous water year, Behzad Parsa, managing director of the Tehran Regional Water Company, told IRNA. Parsa described the situation as unprecedented in decades, attributing it to a 100-percent decrease in rainfall in Tehran province compared with long-term averages.
Expert links crisis to long-term relocation plans
President Masoud Pezeshkian’s repeated focus on Tehran’s water crisis serves two purposes, Water and environmental expert Mohsen Mousavi-Khansari wrote in a piece on Etemad daily.
“The first is to encourage conservation among citizens and to prompt coordinated planning among agencies responsible for water supply, distribution, and use. The second is to prepare public opinion in Tehran and other major cities on the central plateau for the eventual transfer of part of the population and infrastructure toward Iran’s southern coasts.”
He linked this to Pezeshkian’s proposal to relocate the capital to the Makran region.
Ali Moridi, head of the Water, Wastewater and Environmental Engineering Department at Shahid Abbaspour University of Water and Power Industry, said Iran’s water emergency stemmed not only from its arid climate but from a chronic disconnect between scientists, industry, and government agencies.
“If the current situation continues, it is not unlikely that Iran’s central plateau will become depopulated,” Moridi told reporters at a university briefing.
Moridi cited research linking groundwater depletion and soil salinity to rural migration in southern provinces such as Fars, where vanishing wells have pushed villagers toward cities, worsening urban sprawl and social pressures.
“Many rural communities with high migration rates were directly affected by falling groundwater levels and the salinization of drinking water,” he said.
He urged stronger cooperation between academia and policymakers and showcased a new university-led “biochar” project that converts agricultural waste into a soil additive capable of reducing water use in farming – a sector that consumes over 80 percent of Iran’s water.
“The project must move from the lab to the field,” he said. “Reducing agricultural water use is vital if Iran is to survive this crisis.”
Nationwide emergency
Moridi’s comments come as Tehran faces unannounced nightly water cuts, with reservoirs at record lows and drought conditions worsening across 20 provinces.
The Karaj Dam, one of the capital’s main suppliers, has dropped to less than 10 percent of capacity, officials said this week.
Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi said on Saturday that some of the city’s pipeline infrastructure was “over 100 years old and severely damaged,” forcing the government to cut nighttime supply to prevent network collapse.
President Masoud Pezeshkian warned earlier this week that Tehran could face mass evacuation if the drought persists through winter. “If it doesn’t rain, we will have no water,” he said.
Meteorologists say the country has entered one of its driest 50-year periods, with rainfall down more than 85 percent compared with last year.
The National Drought Crisis Center has classified the situation as “severe,” warning that no significant rain is forecast for at least ten days.
“Almost all underground and under-mountain missile infrastructure remains intact and has no serious problems,” Gholamreza Jalali said, crediting long-running operational measures and engineering choices.
The priority given to aerospace and missile assets, Jalali said, guided 20 years of planning for missile cities and depots built into mountains and deep underground. Only minor repairable damage occurred at some access points, he added.
Underground networks and nuclear sites
Sensitive nuclear centers, Jalali said, were placed in safe spaces after early threat assessments, adding that he personally proposed the protected design concept years ago.
“The shadow of war was present from the very beginning of our activities, and based on the threat scenarios, it was decided that sensitive nuclear sites should be designed in secure underground locations beneath mountains.”
During the 12-day war and the US attacks on nuclear facilities, added Jalali, some foreign reports highlighted the confrontation between “bunker buster bombs” and Iranian concrete engineering. “It was an oversimplified interpretation of designs."
“Regarding the US claim of destroying nuclear facilities, it must be said that further details remain classified and confidential,” he added.
Banks cyber security not addressed yet
Jalali pointed to cyber-attacks on Iranian banks, saying two major banks shared a core platform with unresolved weaknesses. “For banking security, we designed a regional secure model and obtained funding, but execution rests with the relevant bodies,” he said.
During the June conflict, Iran’s Bank Sepah and Bank Pasargad were hit by major cyberattacks that disrupted online banking and ATM services.
Jalali also addressed the use of foreign messaging platforms by military figures, saying none of Iran’s commanders, living or dead, had ever used WhatsApp, while reports suggested some Hamas leaders had relied on it.
Advanced surveillance and data-analysis systems – spanning artificial intelligence, satellites, and signal tracking – are fully controlled by Israel and the United States, he said, adding that using such platforms exposes communications to monitoring and targeting.
“When we are in confrontation with such adversaries, we must assume total visibility across digital space.”
Former communications minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said in August that Iranian officials with sensitive information on their phones were easy targets for Israeli cyber operations during June's 12-day war, adding that Israel exploited platforms such as WhatsApp to track them.
“In the recent war, those who had information and were of interest to Israel were easy prey for hacking,” Azari Jahromi said, but did not identify those targeted.
Shelters kept confidential
Tehran has multiple shelter options, including metro stations, car parks, and basements, but officials avoided announcing them publicly to prevent panic, he added.
Local authorities received training to guide people in emergencies, while Tehran Municipality was working to upgrade facilities and warning systems for possible use as public shelters, according to him.
Iran had fully expected attacks on its nuclear facilities and launched a plan to prepare, he added.
Limited drills in Kashan and broader exercises at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan helped minimize risks, Jalali said, adding that chemical storage was cleared and activities scaled back before strikes, and post-attack tests confirmed no radioactive contamination.