Environment & Energy

Iran is looking to relocate the nation’s capital because of severe water shortages that make Tehran unsustainable. Experts say the crisis was caused by years of ill-conceived dam projects and overpumping that destroyed a centuries-old system for tapping underground reserves.
BY FRED PEARCE • DECEMBER 18, 2025

More than international sanctions, more than its stifling theocracy, more than recent bombardment by Israel and the U.S. — Iran’s greatest current existential crisis is what hydrologists are calling its rapidly approaching “water bankruptcy.”

It is a crisis that has a sad origin, they say: the destruction and abandonment of tens of thousands of ancient tunnels for sustainably tapping underground water, known as qanats, that were once the envy of the arid world. But calls for the Iranian government to restore qanats and recharge the underground water reserves that once sustained them are falling on deaf ears.

After a fifth year of extreme drought, Iran’s long-running water crisis reached unprecedented levels in November. The country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, warned that Iran had “no choice” but to move its capital away from arid Tehran, which now has a population of about 10 million, to wetter coastal regions — a project that would take decades and has a price estimated by analysts at potentially $100 billion.

While failed rains may be the immediate cause of the crisis, hydrologists say, the root cause is more than half a century of often foolhardy modern water engineering — extending back to before the country’s Islamic revolution of 1979, but accelerated by the Ayatollahs’ policies since.

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New global study shows freshwater is disappearing at alarming rates
ASU-led research uses 20 years of satellite data to reveal unprecedented continental drying

By Sandy Keaton Leander |
July 25, 2025

New findings from studying over two decades of satellite observations reveal that the Earth’s continents have experienced unprecedented freshwater loss since 2002, driven by climate change, unsustainable groundwater use and extreme droughts.

The study, led by Arizona State University and published today in Science Advances, highlights the emergence of four continental-scale “mega-drying” regions, all located in the Northern Hemisphere, and warns of severe consequences for water security, agriculture, sea-level rise and global stability.

The research team reports that drying areas on land are expanding at a rate roughly twice the size of California every year. And, the rate at which dry areas are getting drier now outpaces the rate at which wet areas are getting wetter, reversing long-standing hydrological patterns.

The negative implications of this for available freshwater are staggering. Seventy-five percent of the world’s population lives in 101 countries that have been losing freshwater for the past 22 years. According to the United Nations, the world’s population is expected to continue to grow for the next 50 to 60 years — at the same time the availability of freshwater is dramatically shrinking.

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