Efforts to ease Tehran’s water shortage through transfers from a nearby dam will only partially address the crisis and could fail entirely if dry conditions persist, a senior water researcher said, warning that years of overuse and policy missteps have depleted reserves.
“The transfer from Taleqan only resolves part of Tehran’s shortage and is not meant to eliminate it altogether,” said Mohammad Javad Zareian, head of the Research Center for Water Resources Studies at the Energy Ministry’s Water Research Institute. “If rainfall deficits continue, Taleqan’s water will not be sufficient.”
The Taleqan Dam, located in Alborz Province, is a hydroelectric facility with an installed capacity of 18 megawatts and serves as one of the five primary water sources supplying the Tehran metropolitan area.
Iran is in its sixth consecutive year of drought, with reservoirs at historic lows. Tehran's Latyan Dam is at its lowest in six decades, Karaj (Amir Kabir) holds under 10% capacity, and Mashhad's dams are below 3%.
Reserves depleted after years of overuse
Iran has faced droughts before, Zareian said, but the past two years have been more severe because buffers that once absorbed shocks have largely vanished. “Previously we had groundwater and storage behind dams, but those have been lost because consumption has exceeded available resources,” he said, adding that errors in water policy and population growth planning compounded the strain.
Long-term trends are moving in the wrong direction, Zareian warned, with declining resources and rising population. Climate change is also intensifying pressure by raising temperatures and reducing precipitation, a pattern seen beyond Iran.
The prolonged dry period has pushed reservoir levels across Iran to historic lows. The crisis is mainly due to decades of mismanagement. Agriculture uses 80 to 90 percent of the country's water but with less than 40 percent efficiency.
Too many dams have been built, leaky pipes waste 15 to 30 percent of supply, wastewater recycling stands at only about 20 percent compared to 85 to 98 percent in neighboring countries, and conservation efforts remain weak.
Separate livelihoods from drinking water
Zareian argued that Tehran and other large cities must separate livelihoods and economic activity from drinking water needs. Household drinking water accounts for only part of total use, he said, while many industries clustered around major cities are water-intensive.
“Except for high-tech sectors, most industries here consume large amounts of water,” Zareian said. He urged factories to cut consumption or rely on recycling within their own systems, a practice common abroad where industrial water is reused multiple times.
Proposals to pipe desalinated seawater to Tehran are economically unsound, Zareian said, citing prohibitive costs that would require massive state subsidies. “With one-tenth of that cost, demand management can stabilize conditions,” he said.
If rainfall fails to recover, authorities will have little choice but to impose consumption limits, he added, noting that drinking water would remain the priority.
“Any substantial effort to restore those capabilities will be a trigger for action,” Brigadier General Amir Avivi, a former officer in the Israeli military who now serves in the reserves, told Iran International in an interview.
The United States held five rounds of negotiations with Tehran over its disputed nuclear program earlier this year, for which President Donald Trump set a 60-day ultimatum.
When no agreement was reached by the 61st day Israel launched a surprise military offensive on June 13, followed by US strikes on June 22 targeting key nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow.
Avivi said Israel's destruction of Iran's air defense capabilities which ultimately paved the way for the US bombing run was swift.
“Within two days we had opened an air corridor to Tehran and could operate almost freely over large parts of Iran,” Avivi said. “They had more than 130 air-defense systems in the west and around Tehran, and we took out roughly 84 of them very quickly.”
Three red lines
Avivi said Israel in coordination with the United States is closely tracking Iran’s efforts to repair war damage as Tehran tries to project strength while quietly restoring parts of its military infrastructure.
“We are watching them by the minute, and there are three red lines that will bring Israel to act again: rebuilding advanced air defenses that close the corridor to Tehran, resuming mass production of ballistic missiles, and any move to renew nuclear weapons work,” Avivi said.
Tehran denies seeking a nuclear weapon and says it aims only for peaceful technology. Israel and Western countries doubt its intentions.
Israeli intelligence has warned that Iran hopes to build a missile arsenal capable of overwhelming Israel's defenses, even as Tehran insists its program is defensive and conventional.
“Before the war they were aiming for around 10,000 ballistic missiles, and we are not going to sit and wait for them to return to that level or get close to a weapons‑grade nuclear capability,” Avivi said.
Scientists, sites and industry
The attacks on June 21 also struck the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s (IRGC) external arm, killing Mohammad Saeed Izadi, who oversaw Palestinian operations, and Mohammadreza Nasirbaghban, the Quds Force’s deputy for intelligence.
The strikes killed senior nuclear scientists along with hundreds of military personnel and civilians. Iranian counterattacks killed 32 Israeli civilians and an off-duty soldier.
“We didn’t only hit the nuclear sites, we hit the scientists, the weaponization experts and the industries that make explosives, fuel and components, so they cannot easily rebuild,” Avivi said.
Iranian authorities have quietly moved surviving nuclear scientists to safe houses and dispersed some sensitive work, while publicly insisting that missile and cyber units remain fully operational.
“The regime was hit very, very hard, much harder than people think, and recovering that military‑industrial base will take them a very long time,” Avivi said. “The image of Iran as a regional powerhouse was exposed as a paper tiger, and that has encouraged Europe to move toward harsher measures.”
Psychological pressure
During the June attacks, Israel also struck Tehran’s Evin prison and state television main building. Iranian officials condemned Israel's onslaught as "terrorism" and "psychological warfare".
The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran said in October that Israel likely violated international law in its military campaign in June while Tehran expanded repression after the conflict with hundreds of executions and new curbs on dissent.
When asked what was the objective of the attack on the prison which according to official tallies killed about 80 people, Avivi said it was a message to leaders in Tehran.
“We hit symbols of repression and propaganda to show that if we decide to destabilize the regime itself, not just its military capabilities, we can reach those places,” Avivi said.
“The idea was to throw the leadership off balance and make them feel existentially threatened, not just militarily exposed.”
‘Campaign between wars’
Avivi described the current period with Iran and its allies as a “campaign between wars,” in which covert operations and limited strikes are used to contain threats between major flare‑ups.
“We are moving from a short war to ongoing operations between wars, some of them kinetic and some not, including cyber and intelligence work,” he said.
Since June, Israel has continued to hit carry out air strikes on targets it says aim at Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. The strikes have killed hundreds of people according local health authorities, many of them civilians.
“We will keep degrading these groups systematically until the day comes when local governments can deal with them themselves,” Avivi said.
Next objective
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed victory in the 12‑day war and threatened a tougher response if Israel strikes again in rhetoric rejected by Israel and the United States.
“In the last round we did not set regime change as a formal goal, but if this regime continues to threaten Israel’s existence, next time bringing it down could be on the table for Israel and the US,” Avivi said.