From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   In Iran, Some Are Chasing the Last Drops of Water   
   By Vivian Yee and Leily Nikounazar, June 21, 2023, NY Times   
   Summer has come to Sistan and Baluchistan province, an impoverished fragment   
   of chapped earth and shimmering heat in Iran’s southeast corner, and all   
   people there can talk about is how to get water.   
      
   For weeks now, taps in cities like Zahedan have yielded nothing but a salty,   
   weakening trickle. In the villages that water pipes have never reached, the   
   few residents who remain say people can barely find enough water to do the   
   laundry or bathe    
   themselves, let alone fish, farm or sustain livestock.   
      
   “Sometimes, just to wash the dishes, we have to wait for so long,” said   
   Setareh, 27, a university student in Zahedan, the provincial capital.   
   “Everything from cooking to other chores is an ordeal for us.”   
      
   Drought has stalked Iran for centuries, but the threat intensified in recent   
   years as political priorities trumped sound water management, experts say.   
   Climate change has only made things worse in an area that typically gets no   
   rainfall for seven months    
   out of the year, and where temperatures can soar to 124 degrees in July.   
      
   Sistan and Baluchistan, where Iranian lawmakers warn the water will run out   
   altogether within three months, might sound like an extreme case. But other   
   regions are not far behind. Drought is forcing water cuts in the capital,   
   Tehran, shrinking Lake Urmia,   
    the largest saltwater lake in the Middle East, and the livelihoods that came   
   with it, and stoking mass migration from Iran’s countryside to its cities.   
      
   Now, the hazards have spread to Iran’s borders, where water disputes are   
   inflaming tensions with neighboring countries like Turkey and Afghanistan. A   
   long-running disagreement between Iran and Afghanistan over rights to the   
   Helmand River, which    
   supplies Sistan and Baluchistan but has provided less water over time, peaked   
   in late May when two Iranian border guards and an Afghan soldier were killed   
   in clashes along the border near the river’s mouth.   
      
   Iranian groundwater and wetlands are irreversibly depleted, water experts say.   
   Because of climate change, Iran can expect hotter temperatures and longer dry   
   spells, as well as a greater risk of destructive floods.   
      
   Yet the country continues to spend precious water on agriculture, which does   
   little to expand the economy but keeps people working in rural Iran, where   
   many government supporters live. It is also developing already-thirsty areas   
   that will only demand    
   more water.   
      
   “Iran is in a water bankruptcy trap and it cannot get out. Unless you cut   
   off consumption, the situation is not going to get better,” said Kaveh   
   Madani, a water expert at the United Nations and the City University of New   
   York who was once a deputy    
   vice president of Iran. “Neighboring countries are suffering from the same   
   issue. Water is becoming more scarce in the region, and competition over water   
   will increase.”   
      
   Mismanagement of Iran’s water goes back at least to Shah Mohammed Reza   
   Pahlavi, who ruled Iran before being deposed in its 1979 Islamic Revolution.   
   He dedicated scarce water to building up agriculture, helping to desiccate the   
   ancient Persian system of    
   underground aqueduct-like canals known as qanats.   
      
   After the revolution thrust Iran into global isolation, its authoritarian   
   clerical leadership doubled down on agriculture, aiming to produce all the   
   food the country needed at home instead of having to import it. Subsidies for   
   agriculture kept farmers in    
   rural areas employed, satisfying a key political constituency of the   
   government, experts say.   
      
   But this emptied aquifers faster than they could be replenished and encouraged   
   farmers to drill illegal wells when they ran out, which only worsened the   
   problem.   
      
   So many illegal wells were drilled to irrigate rice and wheat crops around the   
   UNESCO world heritage site of Persepolis, in south-central Iran, that the   
   ground is sinking, threatening the ancient ruin, local media reported last   
   year.   
      
   The focus on agriculture also diverted water from industrial uses, which could   
   have strengthened Iran’s economy as it contended with Western sanctions   
   designed to force it to limit its nuclear activities, Mr. Madani said.   
      
   Sistan and Baluchistan province depends on the Helmand River, which runs from   
   the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan to the Hamoun wetlands in southeastern   
   Iran, providing critical water for drinking, fishing and farming to people in   
   both countries. But    
   as the river’s flow has shrunk, the wetlands have gone dry.   
      
   Experts said it was not clear what was causing the water shortage, but they   
   predicted the situation would worsen as agriculture and other development   
   increased along Afghanistan’s share of the river.   
      
   Members of Iran’s parliament said in an open letter last week that Sistan   
   and Baluchistan’s water reserves would be exhausted by mid-September,   
   leaving the provincial population of about two million with little choice but   
   to leave.   
      
   “We will see a humanitarian disaster,” warned the letter, signed by 200   
   lawmakers.   
      
   Like other Iranian officials, they accused Afghanistan’s Taliban   
   administration of restricting the river’s flow in violation of a 1973 treaty   
   that divided the rights to its waters, and they demanded that the Taliban   
   reopen the spigot. Afghanistan,    
   however, says there is simply less water to send.   
      
   For the moment, at least, tensions appear to have eased.   
      
   Iran’s ambassador to Kabul announced on Saturday that the Taliban had agreed   
   to allow Iranian hydrologists to inspect the level of water behind an Afghan   
   dam.   
      
   That will not bring any immediate relief to the residents of Sistan and   
   Baluchistan. They said that before, people were concerned mostly about the   
   rising prices of water and the anemic flow. But now, they are worried the   
   water will be totally cut off.   
      
   Long neglected by the government, the inhabitants of Sistan and Baluchistan   
   were quick to join the antigovernment protests that erupted across Iran last   
   September after the death in police custody of a young woman. Though   
   demonstrations in the province    
   were violently suppressed, they outlasted protests in other regions.   
      
   The protests in the province were about grievances far broader than water   
   scarcity, reflecting what residents say is longstanding discrimination against   
   Baluchs, an ethnic minority in Iran.   
      
      
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