Iranian officials are urging its long-suffering people to conserve water, fuel and electricity — as ongoing US sanctions and fallout from the war continue to cripple the regime.
Iranian state media has issued repeated appeals for citizens to cut back their water ahead of the punishing summer dry season, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“All executive bodies, organizations, and public institutions—both governmental and nongovernmental—are required to install water-saving equipment and manage water consumption,” Tehran Province’s state-run water and wastewater company spokesperson Behnam Bakhshi said recently.
Even Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged the strain on resources, warning that the country couldn’t easily export oil, collect taxes or ignore the problems facing businesses.
The country’s oil minister also urged citizens during the war to conserve fuel after US and Israeli attacks decimated parts of Tehran’s fuel supply network.
The US and Tehran reached a tentative agreement Thursday that would extend an April 8 cease-fire. If approved, the deal would also see the US drop its blockade on Iranian ports in exchange for a return to “unrestricted” shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the White House.
It would also begin a 60-day period for the US and Iran to begin negotiating on Tehran’s nuclear issues.
But the water crisis, in particular, has been a daunting challenge regardless of war, as the country has suffered through a historic drought for six years — the result of half a century of foolish modern engineering projects, according to experts.
As Iran’s population swelled in the second half of the 20th century, the Islamic Republic regime built dams on rivers too small to sustain them, drying up wetlands and underground water reserves.
The crisis is now so acute it directly threatens the country’s agricultural sector and food supply.
Despite a reported 72% increase in water inflow to Iran’s dams, uneven rainfall patterns and poor resource management continue to undermine the country’s water security.
Repeated electricity outages affecting agricultural wells could reduce crop production in Iran by 25 to 30%, warned Peyman Alami, head of Iran’s Agricultural Guild Chamber, as reported by Iran News Update.
“The government blames the current crisis on changing climate [but] the dramatic water security issues of Iran are rooted in decades of disintegrated planning and managerial myopia,” the Keven Madani, Iranian director of the UN’s Institute of Water, Environment and Health, told the Yale School of the Environment.
In November, Pezeshkian warned that he might have to move the country’s capital out of Tehran’s desert region to a wetter coastal area, effectively abandoning a city of 10 million people at a potential cost of $100 billion.
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