Temperatures rose above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, air conditioners droned, and power cuts followed. Millions of Iranians baked in the punishing heat. In a rare admission of failure, Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president offered 100 billion tomans (about a million dollars) to anyone who could solve the crisis.
Iran isn’t facing a mere drought. Iran faces water bankruptcy, with demand far outstripping supply. The collapse of water security in Iran has been decades in the making and is rooted in a mania for megaprojects—dam building, deep wells, and water transfer schemes—that ignored the fundamentals of hydrology and ecological balance.