Archive November 12, 2025

Tehran, Iran – Authorities are scrambling to provide drinking water across Iran, particularly in the capital, Tehran, as Iranians grapple with the effects of multiple ongoing crises.

If there is no rain by next month, water will have to be rationed in Tehran; in fact, the city of 10 million may even have to be evacuated, President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a speech on Friday.

While experts say evacuating the city is a last resort that will likely not come to pass, the president’s stark warning is indicative of the mammoth burden facing the country of more than 90 million, its ailing economy reeling under sanctions.

Dry spells everywhere

Iran is now grappling with its sixth consecutive year of drought, while heatwaves pushed temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) during the summer.

The past water year, ending in late September 2025, was one of the driest on record, with the current year shaping up to be worse, with Iran receiving only 2.3mm (0.09 inches) of precipitation by early November, down by 81 percent compared with the historical average of the same period, the Meteorological Organization said.

A whopping 19 dams – up from nine three weeks ago – are on the verge of drying out, filled to less than 5 percent capacity. Dozens of others are not faring much better, according to data from the Water Resources Management Company.

Most of the five major dams feeding Tehran from nearby mountain ranges, the Lar, Latyan, Karaj (Amir Kabir), Taleqan and Mamloo Dams, are at extremely low capacity, with an average of about 10 percent capacity.

A swimmer went viral last week with a video from the Karaj reservoir, showing that the water level was so low that he could walk in parts of it.

No improvement in sight

All eyes are on the skies as authorities are left with very limited options.

Farshid Vahedifard, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tufts University, said the situation will deteriorate unless the country receives substantial rain and snowfall in critical regions.

“Otherwise, the human toll, both economic and social, will be severe,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Water scarcity is already fueling local tensions and protests, which could escalate into broader social conflict, especially as major economic hardships [rising inflation, unemployment, housing issues, and the high cost of living] further erode people’s capacity to cope.”

Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi told reporters on Saturday that the state will imminently start rationing water, even fully shutting it off at night across the country if necessary.

Even before the announcement, people online and some media reported that water stopped at night in Tehran. Millions suffered the effects of unannounced water cut-offs during the summer, as well.

Aliabadi blamed some of the strain on infrastructure damage from the 12-day war with Israel in June and said high-consuming urban users will be penalised. He urged people to buy water storage tanks.

Authorities have long put the onus on people, urging them to consume less. But even if Iranians reduce usage by 20 percent, as authorities demand, household consumption is believed to be less than 8 percent of all use, nearly all the rest going to agriculture.

Local newspapers this week offered a mix of criticism and despair.

The moderate Etemad newspaper said “unqualified” managers in key positions are a root cause of the issue, while reformist daily Shargh wrote that the environment is being “sacrificed for the sake of politics”.

Radical reform implausible

Iran is far from the only country in the region, or the world, feeling the ramifications of a warming climate. But it is doing worse than most big countries in the region.

Kaveh Madani, director of the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and a former deputy head of Iran’s Department of Environment, said that despite Iran not being a water-rich nation, a mix of bad management, lack of foresight and overreliance on technology created a perception of water availability.

“For example, Tehran is a dry place, but you keep bringing water to it, building dams, thinking you can always supply more water to it,” Madani said, adding that, as a result, Iran is now “water bankrupt” – among other things.

“We are not only seeing water bankruptcy … but also energy bankruptcy, natural gas bankruptcy … All of these are signals that tell us how limited resource growth is.

“But I think with the first rain or flood, people could forget about the situation,” he told Al Jazeera.

The first time Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on Iranians to consume less water was almost 15 years ago.

But things have gotten chronically worse since, and no government, reformist, moderate or hardline, has managed to ward off water insecurity as Iran pursued development with little regard to sustainability.

Six years of drought can paralyse any nation, but this does not justify the current lack of water resilience, Madani said, adding that Iran could use this period of focus on water to implement meaningful change, which would require long-term policies that do not yield results in the short run.

“So it requires a real patriot to be willing to be crucified by the general public but bring a collective win for Iranians in the long term. I don’t think that person currently exists, and the things we see in Iran don’t make a radical reform plausible.”

Self-sufficiency, at what cost?

Iranian law stipulates that 85 percent of domestic food be produced locally, Morad Kaviani, professor of geography and hydropolitics at Iran’s Kharazmi University, told state television last week.

However, he added, Iran does not have the water and soil capacities, and nearly 30 percent of agricultural produce is wasted due to a lack of infrastructure, outdated irrigation practices and misguided crop selection.

Modernisation and rapid industrial growth were straining water resources before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the agricultural self-sufficiency policy that came after made things worse.

More than 90 percent of Iran’s water supply is devoted to agriculture, which only accounted for about 12 percent of Iran’s GDP and about 14 percent of employment in the Iranian calendar year that ended in March 2025, according to the Statistical Center of Iran.

But people working in the relatively small sector are also suffering as water sources rapidly dry up.

Post-revolution governments, often through the construction arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), built hundreds of dams and wells, over-interfering with rivers, while many reservoirs sat partially empty.

Authorities have been tapping groundwater reserves at unchecked rates, too, leading to widespread land sinking and ecosystem collapse in areas like Isfahan in central Iran and Sistan and Baluchestan to the southeast.

Tehran and many other cities have outgrown their supplies, forcing reliance on water transfers from distant aquifers via outdated infrastructure.

Iran is also unable to attract foreign investment to save its ailing infrastructure due to the devastating sanctions for years that have been in place for years.

Under the sanctions, Iran cannot diversify modes of employment in rural areas where most people engage in water-intensive agriculture, forcing continued water allocation to agriculture out of fear that threatening those farm jobs could cause protests and even create a national security risk, the UN university’s Madani said.

Decades of mismanagement

About a third of all water in Iran is wasted or spent without yielding returns, state media cited the Water and Wastewater Company of Iran as saying in late September.

That includes about 15 percent in physical losses, and more than 16 percent classified as illegal consumption, free public use, and meter error.

Vahedifard, the professor, pointed out that the government has launched short-term measures such as desalination and inter-basin transfers, but the water system is already in “an almost unrecoverable state” after decades of mismanagement and ignored warnings by experts.

“Planning must now focus on managing the reality of scarcity … shifting from supply-oriented engineering to resilience-based management, centred on groundwater recharge and aquifer restoration,” Vahedifard said, adding that Iran also needs infrastructure investment, transparent data sharing, integrated water–energy–agriculture planning, and genuine community participation.

He said different communities across Iran face different risk thresholds based on socioeconomic and environmental conditions, and there are deep disparities between urban and rural areas and central and peripheral provinces in terms of being prioritised in national water and infrastructure policies.

A day after a bomb blast in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, and two days after a similar explosion in India’s capital, New Delhi, tensions in South Asia have heightened. A blame game has intensified between the neighbours who are still reeling from a brief but intense conflict just six months ago.

Here is more about what happened in Islamabad and Delhi, and what Pakistani and Indian officials are saying about the attacks.

What happened in Delhi?

At 6:52pm (13:22 GMT) on Monday, a powerful explosion tore through Delhi, in a densely populated area near the Red Fort Metro Station. At least 13 people were killed and more than 20 people were wounded.

“A slow-moving vehicle stopped at a red light. An explosion happened in that vehicle, and due to the explosion, nearby vehicles were also damaged,” Delhi Police Commissioner Satish Golcha told reporters.

Who has India blamed for it?

While India has not officially blamed anyone, Delhi Police have invoked India’s primary “counterterrorism” law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or UAPA, of 1967.

Police detained the original owner of the vehicle in which the explosion took place. The owner was identified as Mohammad Salman in the city of Gurugram in Haryana state on Delhi’s outskirts. Salman had purchased the vehicle in 2013.

Investigators revealed that Salman sold the vehicle to a man in New Delhi, who later resold it. The man who Salman sold the vehicle to has also been arrested. Despite the sales, the car remained registered in Salman’s name and bore a Haryana number plate, according to local media reports.

During a scheduled trip to the Bhutanese capital Thimpu, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: “Today, I have come to Bhutan with a very heavy heart. The horrific incident that happened in Delhi last evening has deeply disturbed everyone.”

Modi added: “Our agencies will get to the very bottom of this conspiracy. The conspirators behind this will not be spared. All those responsible will be brought to justice.”

Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh also said that investigative agencies are conducting a “swift and thorough” inquiry into the blast.

But despite these statements, Indian leaders and security officials have so far not formally named any individual or group as responsible for the explosion.

How has Pakistan responded to India?

New Delhi has also, so far, not accused Pakistan of being behind the attack.

But Pakistani officials have said that they expect India to blame Pakistan for the attack in Delhi.

While speaking to local media, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said, referring to the attack in Delhi: “I won’t be surprised if in the next few hours or tomorrow India blames us for this.”

What happened in Islamabad?

Less than 24 hours after the attack in Delhi, around 12:30pm (07:30 GMT) on Tuesday, an explosion took place at the entrance of the District Judicial Complex on Srinagar Highway in Islamabad.

Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said to reporters that a “suicide bomber” detonated explosives near a police vehicle outside the gates of the court.

Naqvi added that the perpetrator tried to “enter the court premises but, failing to do so, targeted a police vehicle.”

The minister said that at least 12 people were killed in the attack in Islamabad and more than 30 were wounded, with at least five in critical condition.

The Jamaa-ul-Ahrar, which is a splinter faction of the Pakistan Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP) armed group, has claimed responsibility for the attack. But the TTP, which ideologically aligns with the Afghan Taliban, has denied its involvement in the attack.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said that he “strongly condemned the suicide blast”.

Who has Pakistan blamed for it?

Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif has blamed “Indian proxies” for the attack on Islamabad, without providing evidence.

In a statement, Sharif said: “Terrorist attacks on unarmed citizens of Pakistan by India’s terrorist proxies are condemnable.”

A day before the Islamabad attack, a car packed with explosives crashed into the campus entrance in district capital Wana. Security forces report that at least 300 cadets have been rescued, and operations to free the rest are still under way. Sharif has also blamed India for this attack.

“Both attacks are the worst examples of Indian state terrorism in the region. It is time for the world to condemn such nefarious conspiracies of India,” Sharif said.

Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif claimed that the attack in Islamabad was planned from Afghanistan, at India’s behest. Relations between Pakistan and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan have been deteriorating for years, hitting a new peak of tension in October following a series of border clashes.

During the clashes, which began in early October, 50 civilians were killed and 447 were injured on the Afghan side of the border, according to the United Nations. At least five people were killed in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Peace talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan, mediated by Qatar and Turkiye in Istanbul, collapsed on November 7.

At the same time, the relations between India and the Taliban are thawing. Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi visited India in early October, marking the first visit by a top Taliban leader since the group returned to power in 2021.

Earlier this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkiye’s foreign and defence ministers, along with its intelligence chief, will visit Pakistan to discuss Islamabad’s stalled peace talks with Afghanistan.

In a social media post on Tuesday after the suicide attack, Asif had written that Pakistan was “in a state of war”.

How has India responded?

On Tuesday, Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, deemed Pakistan’s allegations that India was behind the attack in Islamabad “baseless and unfounded”.

While responding to media queries, Jaiswal said: “India unequivocally rejects the baseless and unfounded allegations being made by an obviously delirious Pakistani leadership.”

Jaiswal accused Pakistani officials of trying to distract attention from the controversial 27th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan that the Sharif government is trying to push through parliament. Opposition parties, activists and sitting judges have criticised the amendment as further consolidating the authority of the country’s already powerful military leadership, and of undermining the Supreme Court by setting up a parallel Federal Constitutional Court. If this amendment becomes law, it would essentially protect the highest-ranking military leaders from criminal prosecution while restructuring the military’s chain of command.

“It is a predictable tactic by Pakistan to concoct false narratives against India in order to deflect the attention of its own public from the ongoing military-inspired constitutional subversion and power grab unfolding within the country,” Jaiswal said.

On Monday, Pakistan’s Senate approved the 27th Amendment. To become law, the amendment needs to secure a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament. The debate around the amendment is ongoing in the National Assembly as of Wednesday.

“The international community is well aware of the reality and will not be misled by Pakistan’s desperate diversionary ploys,” Jaiswal said.

Why have India and Pakistan responded the way they did?

India has exercised more caution compared to Pakistan while ascribing blame, and experts attribute this caution to lessons learned during the conflict in May.

On April 22, armed attackers killed 26 people in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir. The attack was claimed by the Resistance Front (TRF), which India alleges is linked to Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) — a claim Islamabad denies.

After this incident, India scaled back diplomatic ties and suspended the Indus Waters Treaty. On May 7, India struck nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir with missiles, which Islamabad said killed dozens of civilians. Over the following three days, the countries engaged in a heated aerial war, using drones and missiles to target each other’s military bases.

A ceasefire was eventually brokered on May 10.

Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst, told Al Jazeera that it was “not a surprise that Pakistan has blamed India for these attacks”.

“We’ve seen a pattern in recent years of Pakistan categorically accusing India of sponsoring anti-Pakistan groups, as well as most terrorist attacks inside Pakistan,” Kugelman said. India denies any links with attacks inside Pakistan.

But, Kugelman said, India’s response to the Delhi blast had been complicated by its reaction to the April killings.

“After the India-Pakistan conflict ended in May, Prime Minister Modi essentially announced a new doctrine in which he said that any terrorist attack on Indian soil will be viewed as an act of war, and that the terrorists would not be distinguished from their sponsors,” Kugelman said.

He explained that if India publicly accuses Pakistan right away, under its post-conflict doctrine, it would be compelled to respond forcefully.

New Delhi’s aggressive response in May — without furnishing any proof of Pakistan’s involvement in the Pahalgam attack — “made it difficult for India to sustain support from the international community throughout the conflict, particularly as it continued to wage its strikes in Pakistan,” Kugelman said.

The analyst said he did not expect India to rush to blame Pakistan for the attack unless it finds “smoking gun proof” to publicise.

What do these attacks mean for the region?

Kugelman said that the blasts in Delhi and Islamabad are rare occurrences in these capitals, and they underscore the broad security risks confronting South Asia across a wide stretch of territory.

“There are implications from these attacks for both India and Pakistan, but also Afghanistan, in the sense that Pakistan has blamed Taliban-sponsored militants for the attacks on its soil. Meanwhile, the Taliban have strengthened ties with India.

“You’re looking at a situation that really underscores just how strained the region is now, not just in terms of India-Pakistan relations.”

What’s next?

Kugelman said that what comes next will depend on a variety of factors.

“The immediate factor is what response might there be from each country.”

He predicted that Pakistan is likely to respond against Afghanistan, given Islamabad’s belief that the Taliban is backing militants striking from Afghan soil.

“Talks with the Taliban have not succeeded, and with this attack in Islamabad, I would argue that psychologically it’s very damaging for the civilian and military leadership in Pakistan because Islamabad is a relatively peaceful and safe capital city, highly secure,” Kugelman said.

“These types of blasts are very unusual, so it’s traumatic, it’s embarrassing, and it’s also an intelligence failure.”

Thousands of children in Gaza have been forced to take on adult responsibilities such as providing food, water and caring for family members injured by Israeli attacks. The UN says this ‘lost generation’ of children needs urgent help to get over the trauma of war.