Iran faces unprecedented drought as water crisis hits Tehran
bbc.com
bbc.com
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 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).
They could just stop being at war with Israel any time, it is a pointless choice.
In the meantime i hope it rains.
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.
(Sounds familiar? Warning bells for other locals, maybe? ..)
Most educated Iranians you know, btw, are (drum roll) in diaspora, for good reasons.
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
It's an Islamic theocracy with nuclear as well as regional hegemonic ambitions; what about the corresponding impoverishment of its citizens is "baffling" to you?
Imagine if the US targeted germany or japan or saudi arabia for destruction. They'd be in far worse situation than iran.
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
Nearby Israel has desalination plants that seem to be working out well.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project
Then, desalination requires energy, and Iran already faces blackouts here and there, there just isn't much spare capacity.
That is enough for drinking and probably enough for cooking which should be the priority in a situation like this.
Or the undground Great Man-Made River Project of Libya moving 6.5 million cubic meters over 2,820 km.
Main issue ther though is the first is from already present freshwater sources and the latter from underground aquifers. With both having been done over multilpe decades to reach that capacity. Finding the water to move would be the main challenge, een though the Caspian is less saline than ocean water - there are probably water usage agreemets with the neighbourign countries preventing a massive undertaking of such size.
Some people will try to blame EVs for environmental damage when we have this monstrosity.
This situation was avoidable but it required investment years ago. Kind of too late now.
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.
Even without that factor, Attention does matter. Governments can do multiple things, but in more dictatorial regimes, doing things well often require prioritization at the top, and there is a limited number of things the top can prioritize. Its one of the main failings of dictatorships in general: the top is afraid to appoint too competent middle management lest they rise up, so everything becomes very top down managed.
Additionally some of the issues causing this seem to be related to corruption in their military, like diverting water in unsustainable ways to support farming projects that have ties to people well connected to irgc. (To be fair, i dont know how true that is, i dont have a good source for that)
Iran's not war not peace policy is an expensive one, both directly and indirectly (e.g. turning them into a parriah state). In the end it seems like its also been largely ineffective. Instead of keeping them out of war, proxies like Hamas ended up drawing them into one, and it ended up being a pretty one sided war not in their favour. Although i suppose prior to that point it was yielding geopolitical gains.
Analysis that looks at countries like Iran simply as tools of Superpowers is reductive Cold War area analysis that has gigantic blind spots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_government_re...
Anyways my point was not really about hurricane.