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.
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.