Perhaps if they had put more resources toward maintaining their water infrastructure instead of spending on their nuclear arms ambitions, funding Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, etc., they might not have had this problem.
Governments like all institutions are able to do many things at once. Connecting their water problems to the issues you list is essentially a non sequitur absent specific evidence of either/or policy choices.
You can trace all their problems back to the 1979 Islamic revolution. If they would have simply kept the Shah as the ruler and stayed a client state to Britain, they wouldn't need to fund any of these militants, and would probably be a friend to western countries.
You gonna say the same about the consequence of events like Hurricane Katrina? Couple of less nukes, military contracts or whatever and you could have prevented the disaster.
I find Iran to be a truly baffling civilization. Iranians are so educated and orderly, but the country punches so below its weight class in terms of prosperity.
Geographically speaking, over 80% of Iran’s land is classified as arid or semi-arid, and it is likely to face over 5°C of warming by the end of the century: the impacts of climate change will likely be more severe in Iran than the regional average. The region suffers from extreme weather including both droughts and flooding, seismic activity in the form tectonic uplift, particularly near the Makran coast, and constant attacks: economic attack by sanction, cyber attack on energy infrastructure, and lately even kinetic attack from neighbors. The fact that the regime hasn’t collapsed is a testament to Persian, Iranian and Islamic culture, and I hope its people find ways to prosper when the deck is so stacked against them.
Iran isn’t a breadbasket exactly, but it has more arable land per person than Germany, Italy, the UK, or Ireland. And vastly more than Japan. It’s relatively temperate now—future warming doesn’t explain its current situation. On top of all that, it has oil! In 1980, just after the revolution, Iran had a PPP GDP per capita above Taiwan, China, and South Korea. And only modestly behind Poland. Today those countries are far ahead. Same for Thailand, Malaysia, and Turkey.
The economic sanctions are a symptom not the cause.
It's nominal GDP per capita was above Taiwan, Turkiye, South Korea, and all of Eastern Europe.
If none of the stuff that happened to Iran in our timeline didn't happened in the 1980s-2000s, it probably could have seen an economic boom comparable to what SK and Taiwan saw in the 1990s - especially becuase the leadership in 1980s South Korea and Taiwan were equally as authoritarian as that in Iran back then.
Other similar losers from that era were the DRC, Syria (before the civil war it was roughly on par with Turkiye), the Ivory Coast (it was France's premier financial hub in Franafrique before the civil war), and Pakistan (it's GDP per capita was significantly above China's until the 1990s, and Pakistani advisors helped industrialize significant portions of the Gulf).
I completely agree with you. We who wish well on Iranians can only hope the situation is speedily rectified and the regime will finally fall, ending the oppression, want, war and poverty they have inflicted on so many millions of people both within and without their borders.
Almost everything you’ve described, except for natural disasters, is an own goal. There’s literally no need for the country to be poor and on the brink of collapse. They are doing it to themselves.
Their government spends itself into poverty fighting proxy wars against Israel both directly and indirectly through sanctions. It’s a theocracy so economics is not the most important thing to their leaders.
It's hard to manage a water supply and economy in Tehran when your top minds are busy running proxy wars in Lebanon and Iraq and funding or supporting ones in Syria, Yemen, and Gaza [1, 2].
It's sad to such a great people subjugated by their government.
Dams blocking the inflow to Lake Urmia that almost dried up nowadays were built by the Shah, for example. Man-made environmental damage and corruption aren't new by any measure, as well as unstable water levels and shortages in arid zones. See e.g. Aral Sea which fluctuated in the range of dozens of meters over centuries before finally drying up, which was enough to establish and subsequently abandon multiple settlements on the lake bed during the Mongol Empire.
It is a crying shame and the Iranians deserve better. At the moment 16 million people may find themselves without water in the near future. I'm lost for words.
If one positive thing could be found in this situation it might finally be the thing that brings down the regime. I think it's fair to say this year has been an annus horribilis for them.
They will still be empty eventually. It might still become a stable situation though. If you look at pictures from North Korea the only person who doesn't look malnourished is Kim Jong Un. Otoh water is different from food. Also it's the middle east. They might have to cut back on their aggression but their antagonists (who by now is literally everyone) won't.
Pipes to quench a 10-million city through 100 kms of mountains (140km by road), going up 2 kms from the sea level? That's more than Israel's max distance from the sea (and it's mostly flat).
I'm ignorant but aren't oil pipelines much longer? They don't need to traverse mountain ranges but still. Either way i can't imagine such a project would be possible in an emergency time scale without the combined assistance of the US, Israel (desalination experts) and China. i know absolutely nothing about these things, so i don't know if it's even theoretically possible with their help.
Apparently the highest oil pipeline throughput (Druzhba) is 1.4 million barrels per day, which amounts to some 2000 liters per second. That would be 20 liters/person/day - kinda maybe enough to move the needle, but not quite.
Building this sort of pipeline today is about $1-2M per km on flat land. I'm not aware of comparable pipelines in the mountains.
Then, desalination requires energy, and Iran already faces blackouts here and there, there just isn't much spare capacity.
I cannot imagine the logistical nightmare of evacuating a metro area with 16 million people. Where do they go? Where has sufficient water to slake the thirst of that many?
it would be one of the largest sudden migrations of people in history.
to put this in perspective, 13M people fled during the Syrian Civil War. 5.7M people fled Ukraine. The evacuation of New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina was 1.2M people.
Never under estimate China. AP News says China expected 270M cross region trips during the Chinese new year this year. Likely with millions out of Beijing alone by itself for this yearly event over 2 weeks.
That's also half way across the world to a country that is not exactly on friendly terms with Iran (not as unfriendly as say usa is, but still not geopolitical friends)
Perhaps if they had put more resources toward maintaining their water infrastructure instead of spending on their nuclear arms ambitions, funding Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, etc., they might not have had this problem.
Governments like all institutions are able to do many things at once. Connecting their water problems to the issues you list is essentially a non sequitur absent specific evidence of either/or policy choices.
You can trace all their problems back to the 1979 Islamic revolution. If they would have simply kept the Shah as the ruler and stayed a client state to Britain, they wouldn't need to fund any of these militants, and would probably be a friend to western countries.
You are never a friend of the Western countries [==the US] when you are an oil producer. You are their vassal or their foe. #oilCurse
You gonna say the same about the consequence of events like Hurricane Katrina? Couple of less nukes, military contracts or whatever and you could have prevented the disaster.
How do you prevent a hurricane? The failures of responding to the disaster were all at the state/local level.
The failures were not all at the state/local level. The feds also had many issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_government_re...
You do not prevent hurricane. But you can prevent fucked up dams, corralling people in stadiums etc. etc.
Anyways my point was not really about hurricane.
FYI there is an 2 year old Asianometry video on this topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaEhNTpvEN8
I find Iran to be a truly baffling civilization. Iranians are so educated and orderly, but the country punches so below its weight class in terms of prosperity.
Geographically speaking, over 80% of Iran’s land is classified as arid or semi-arid, and it is likely to face over 5°C of warming by the end of the century: the impacts of climate change will likely be more severe in Iran than the regional average. The region suffers from extreme weather including both droughts and flooding, seismic activity in the form tectonic uplift, particularly near the Makran coast, and constant attacks: economic attack by sanction, cyber attack on energy infrastructure, and lately even kinetic attack from neighbors. The fact that the regime hasn’t collapsed is a testament to Persian, Iranian and Islamic culture, and I hope its people find ways to prosper when the deck is so stacked against them.
Iran isn’t a breadbasket exactly, but it has more arable land per person than Germany, Italy, the UK, or Ireland. And vastly more than Japan. It’s relatively temperate now—future warming doesn’t explain its current situation. On top of all that, it has oil! In 1980, just after the revolution, Iran had a PPP GDP per capita above Taiwan, China, and South Korea. And only modestly behind Poland. Today those countries are far ahead. Same for Thailand, Malaysia, and Turkey.
The economic sanctions are a symptom not the cause.
Not just PPP.
It's nominal GDP per capita was above Taiwan, Turkiye, South Korea, and all of Eastern Europe.
If none of the stuff that happened to Iran in our timeline didn't happened in the 1980s-2000s, it probably could have seen an economic boom comparable to what SK and Taiwan saw in the 1990s - especially becuase the leadership in 1980s South Korea and Taiwan were equally as authoritarian as that in Iran back then.
Other similar losers from that era were the DRC, Syria (before the civil war it was roughly on par with Turkiye), the Ivory Coast (it was France's premier financial hub in Franafrique before the civil war), and Pakistan (it's GDP per capita was significantly above China's until the 1990s, and Pakistani advisors helped industrialize significant portions of the Gulf).
All good points.
"economic attack by sanction, cyber attack on energy infrastructure, and lately even kinetic attack from neighbors."
They could just stop being at war with Israel any time, it is a pointless choice.
I completely agree with you. We who wish well on Iranians can only hope the situation is speedily rectified and the regime will finally fall, ending the oppression, want, war and poverty they have inflicted on so many millions of people both within and without their borders.
In the meantime i hope it rains.
Almost everything you’ve described, except for natural disasters, is an own goal. There’s literally no need for the country to be poor and on the brink of collapse. They are doing it to themselves.
Gee, I wonder what possibly could have happened over the last 50 or so years that might have damaged their prosperity.
Their government spends itself into poverty fighting proxy wars against Israel both directly and indirectly through sanctions. It’s a theocracy so economics is not the most important thing to their leaders.
Well it's the most heavily sanctioned country on earth...
Sanctions surely aren’t helping
The situation the article is about seems more to do with corruption and mismanagement than sanctions.
It's hard to manage a water supply and economy in Tehran when your top minds are busy running proxy wars in Lebanon and Iraq and funding or supporting ones in Syria, Yemen, and Gaza [1, 2].
It's sad to such a great people subjugated by their government.
1: https://www.cfr.org/article/irans-regional-armed-network 2: https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/proxy-wars/map
Dams blocking the inflow to Lake Urmia that almost dried up nowadays were built by the Shah, for example. Man-made environmental damage and corruption aren't new by any measure, as well as unstable water levels and shortages in arid zones. See e.g. Aral Sea which fluctuated in the range of dozens of meters over centuries before finally drying up, which was enough to establish and subsequently abandon multiple settlements on the lake bed during the Mongol Empire.
Theocracy surely isn't helping
I wonder what happened...
It is a crying shame and the Iranians deserve better. At the moment 16 million people may find themselves without water in the near future. I'm lost for words.
If one positive thing could be found in this situation it might finally be the thing that brings down the regime. I think it's fair to say this year has been an annus horribilis for them.
I suspect that the IRGC will be the last ones with empty canteens.
They will still be empty eventually. It might still become a stable situation though. If you look at pictures from North Korea the only person who doesn't look malnourished is Kim Jong Un. Otoh water is different from food. Also it's the middle east. They might have to cut back on their aggression but their antagonists (who by now is literally everyone) won't.
It's all British/American fault. /s
They are governed by Islamic fundamentalists ?
They were so ahead of their times compared to NYC they let Islamo-Marxists take over in 1979 and this is the result. Oh well...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_water_shortage
"These (IRGC and government) privileged neighborhoods maintain numerous private swimming pools and spacious green spaces."
Iran isn't that far from the Caspian. Is it not possible to develop a desalination plant?
Nearby Israel has desalination plants that seem to be working out well.
Not in the course of the next few weeks.
This situation was avoidable but it required investment years ago. Kind of too late now.
Pipes to quench a 10-million city through 100 kms of mountains (140km by road), going up 2 kms from the sea level? That's more than Israel's max distance from the sea (and it's mostly flat).
I'm ignorant but aren't oil pipelines much longer? They don't need to traverse mountain ranges but still. Either way i can't imagine such a project would be possible in an emergency time scale without the combined assistance of the US, Israel (desalination experts) and China. i know absolutely nothing about these things, so i don't know if it's even theoretically possible with their help.
Apparently the highest oil pipeline throughput (Druzhba) is 1.4 million barrels per day, which amounts to some 2000 liters per second. That would be 20 liters/person/day - kinda maybe enough to move the needle, but not quite. Building this sort of pipeline today is about $1-2M per km on flat land. I'm not aware of comparable pipelines in the mountains.
Then, desalination requires energy, and Iran already faces blackouts here and there, there just isn't much spare capacity.
In a year, with massive sanctions, for this many people? No. Not a chance.
I cannot imagine the logistical nightmare of evacuating a metro area with 16 million people. Where do they go? Where has sufficient water to slake the thirst of that many?
it would be one of the largest sudden migrations of people in history.
to put this in perspective, 13M people fled during the Syrian Civil War. 5.7M people fled Ukraine. The evacuation of New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina was 1.2M people.
Never under estimate China. AP News says China expected 270M cross region trips during the Chinese new year this year. Likely with millions out of Beijing alone by itself for this yearly event over 2 weeks.
.
That's also half way across the world to a country that is not exactly on friendly terms with Iran (not as unfriendly as say usa is, but still not geopolitical friends)
The BBC article spelled the dam's name wrong in their interactive image. It's Latyan Dam if anyone else wanted to look up more on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latyan_Dam https://maps.app.goo.gl/UzQrPMR4iHRdbsuP7
Edit: TIL there can be different translations/spellings of Persian to English
Well, the actual spelling is لتيان, so it comes down to how you choose to romanize it.
I had no idea Romanization of Perian was a thing. Thanks for sharing!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Persian
Is their geography able to emulate what Africa has done with off grid pumps?
I don't know whether Israel water technology can help in this situation? After all, Israel did a fairly good job irrigating their equally arid soil.
It's a pity that geopolitics -- specifically, Iran's desire to eliminate Israel -- is the reason why we couldn't test this out.