Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran, once the Middle East’s largest, will completely dry up by the end of summer if current conditions persist, a senior Iranian environment official warned on Sunday.
“The lake's water level on August 1, 2025, was 1,269.74 meters, its area had shrunk to 581 square kilometers, and its volume was down to about half a billion cubic meters,” said Ahmadreza Lahijanzadeh, deputy for marine and wetland affairs at Iran’s Department of Environment.
This indicates "a sharp and unprecedented decline from last year," he said in an interview with the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News.
The official said the lack of water inflow means the situation will not improve in autumn and that while the lake could be revived, it would not return to its ideal conditions of 1995, when it held 32 billion cubic meters of water.
Despite repeated government pledges over two decades, the lake’s revival plans have faltered due to chronic underfunding, bureaucratic turf wars, and weak enforcement.
Lahijanzadeh said drought was one of the important factors behind the lake's current crisis, alongside drinking water shortages in some cities.
Last week, head of the Water Institute at the University of Tehran warned the lake may have reached a “point of no return” and could never be preserved in its current form, blaming the expansion of farmland beyond the watershed’s capacity.
Last September, the lake dried up completely for the second time after briefly refilling in the spring.
Over 90 percent of the country is experiencing some level of drought, with rainfall plummeting and water reserves dwindling.
The drying of major water bodies like Lake Urmia and the Zayandeh Rud River has intensified Iran’s overlapping economic and ecological crises, as decades of mismanagement catches up with the theocratic establishment.
