Iranian president: Due to water shortage and if it doesn’t rain… We’ll have to evacuate Tehran!

Iranian President Masoud Bezshakian has warned that the capital Tehran may need to evacuate its residents due to water shortages if rain does not fall before the end of the year.

In a speech broadcast on state television, Bezshakian said: “If it doesn’t rain, we will have to start rationing water in Tehran between late November and early December”.

“Even if we rationed water supplies, and it doesn’t rain by then, we will run out of water, and we will have to evacuate Tehran,” he added.

Iran has generally been affected by low rainfall, but the repercussions are most pronounced in Tehran, which has a population of more than 10 million.

On Sunday, the director of the regional water company, Behzad Barsa, told a media outlet that there was enough water for only two weeks in the main reservoir supplying Tehran.

The level of rainfall this year reached 152 millimeters, a decrease of 40%, compared to the average over 57 years.

Mohammad Reza Kavianpour, head of the Water Research Institute, said that many provinces have seen a 50 to 80% reduction in rainfall.

He pointed out that the storage in the capital’s dams in the new water year, which began in late September, amounted to 250 million cubic meters, about half of the 490 million cubic meters, recorded in the 2023-2024 water year.

“We’ve to prepare ourselves for a critical situation,” he said.

The water level in the reservoirs supplying the capital has fallen to its lowest level in decades, according to Mohsen Ardakani, general manager of the Tehran Water Company.

“In the last six months, residents have saved 10% of their water consumption,” Ardakani told state television on Wednesday, adding that if that number reaches 20%, we will be able to ensure a stable water situation for a month or two, until the rains start to fall”.

It’s wprth noting that it usually rains and snows in Tehran during the winter months, but, a sharp drop in rainfall and reduced water flow from dams have exacerbated the crisis, as Iran experiences one of its worst droughts in decades.

In recent months, water has been cut off from many neighborhoods in Tehran, with the aim of saving on its consumption, as the government force to ration water supply by cutting it off on a regular basis last summer.

In July and August, the Iranian government declared two holidays in Tehran to manage water and energy consumption, at a time when electricity was cut off almost daily amid the heatwave.