The Media Line: Can Iran’s Water Mafia Be Contained?

Can Iran’s Water Mafia Be Contained?

Years of corruption have laid the foundation for causing and profiting from water scarcity in Iran

By Giorgia Valente/The Media Line

Tehran is now living in a countdown. After one of the driest years on record, Iranian officials and foreign observers are warning that the capital is edging toward “Day Zero”—the moment its taps could effectively run dry. Average rainfall over the last water year fell sharply below the long-term norm, leaving much of the country in significant drought and draining key reservoirs to historic lows.

Tehran’s five main dams are now hovering around a fraction of their capacity, forcing authorities to impose rolling cuts and issue urgent appeals to save water. The crisis is the latest and starkest sign of a deeper structural problem: a water system hollowed out by decades of mismanagement, corruption, and over-extraction, increasingly described inside Iran as the work of a “water mafia” linked to powerful political and military networks.

At the same time, Iran’s economy is cracking under high inflation and sluggish growth, eroding purchasing power and pushing more people into poverty even as basic services falter. Against that backdrop, a new phase of unrest is taking shape. Water protests in provinces such as Khuzestan and Isfahan, where demonstrators chanted “I am thirsty” and camped in dry riverbeds, have folded into broader anger over rising prices, corruption, and personal freedoms, drawing many women into the streets without compulsory hijab despite repeated crackdowns since the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022.

Two Iranian experts who spoke to The Media Line describe a system in “water bankruptcy,” where environmental limits, economic grievances, and the struggle over women’s rights now converge.

For cartoonist and water policy analyst Nik Kowsar, the starting point is clear: Iran’s drought is not just about climate.

“I don’t really see this as a ‘natural’ drought. What we’re living through is an anthropogenic drought, mostly man-made, then turbocharged by climate change.

“After the Iran–Iraq War, a very specific reconstruction model took shape. It wasn’t about rebuilding lives; it was about pouring concrete and money. Three names kept coming up in project after project: Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters as the main contractor, Iran Water and Power Resources Development Company as the project developer, and Mahab Ghodss as the key consultant. Together they pushed a wave of dams and inter-basin transfers through the system, often without real environmental assessments or proper permits,” he says to The Media Line.

On paper, these projects were sold as engines of self-sufficiency under sanctions and as symbols of national pride. In practice, Kowsar argues, they fed a patronage economy that channeled public funds into a small constellation of contractors and consultants while groundwater was drained and rivers diverted.

He stresses that climate is an amplifier, not the root cause:

“Climate change is the heat, but the system lit the fire. What you see in Khuzestan, Isfahan, Sistan-Baluchestan, and many other places is the result of bad governance, chronic mismanagement, and a foreign policy that constantly needs to prove ‘self-sufficiency.’ That slogan has been used to justify water-hungry agriculture in already-stressed basins and to push hundreds of dams and big water transfer schemes between watersheds,” he says.

“The outcome is obvious on the ground: lakes gone, rivers turned into drainage canals, wetlands dried out, aquifers collapsing. The damage doesn’t fall equally. It deepens environmental injustice—and strips people of both water security and basic dignity—especially in marginal regions where communities don’t have much political leverage and are treated as sacrifice zones,” he adds.

For him, the “water mafia” is not a metaphor but a description of a specific network:

“When I talk about the ‘water mafia,’ I mean this informal alliance around those three institutions, plus a whole ecosystem of smaller firms, engineers, academics, and fixers who have learned how to turn public funds and natural resources into private gain. Ecological limits, the rights of downstream communities, people’s safety and dignity—those come last, if at all.

“In the middle of all this, the population climbed from about 37 million to over 90 million in under five decades, while renewable water resources were going in the opposite direction. That, combined with destructive policies, has pushed Iran into water bankruptcy,” he notes.

From a different vantage point, Hamid-Reza Najmi, CEO of Geo Acumen, an independent, nonpartisan research and advisory firm focused on the Middle East, sees the same pattern.

“What we’re seeing in Iran today is not just a drought; it’s the collision of natural stress with four decades of political and economic mismanagement. Inside the country, officials and MPs openly speak of a ‘water mafia’ controlling dams, transfer projects, and industrial allocations. These aren’t abstract accusations. They refer to a very real network of bureaucrats, contractors, and politically connected businesses that profit from scarcity and operate without transparency,” he told The Media Line.

Najimi also argues that climate change interacts with policy decisions rather than determining them: “The real story is how water has been diverted to steel plants and politically favored industries while rivers like the Zayandeh Rud and the Karun dry up.”

“In Khuzestan, Isfahan, and Sistan-Baluchestan, shortages come from decades of over-extraction, ill-conceived dams, and agricultural policies that pushed water-hungry crops into the driest parts of the country. Even Iranian experts acknowledge that mismanagement — not just drought — has created this catastrophe,” he added.

Behind the headline shortages, Kowsar sees a political economy structured around contracts and impunity: “Most of the worst water projects in Iran weren’t innocent technical mistakes. They were profitable choices made inside a corrupt system.

“Dam and tunnel contracts went again and again to a small club of firms tied to the Guards and to political elites around the water mafia. Many big inter-basin transfers from rivers like the Karun made very little sense hydrologically, but they guaranteed years of construction and consulting income,” Kowsar explained.

“For a short time, these projects brought jobs to some rural areas. Then the valleys were flooded, villages were displaced and downstream farms and ecosystems were left in worse shape than before,” he adds.

“The key players know they’re protected. IRGC-linked firms and their favorite contractors and consultants have been rescued by the judiciary more than once, even when local courts initially ruled against them. For ordinary people, that translates into environmental damage with no justice and a daily sense of humiliation: they see a state that values contracts, kickbacks and prestige projects more than their lives, land, and dignity,” he concludes.

The human cost is spreading from the riverbanks into Iran’s social fabric. Kowsar describes a predictable but brutal sequence in rural areas: “If you live in a village that depends on groundwater and the pumps keep running year after year, beyond what nature can recharge, the story is very simple: the aquifer drops, the land starts to sink, and fields that once fed families inch toward the desert.”

He explains, “ Herders relying on rangelands and shrubs see their grazing grounds turn to dust and thorn. They sell part of the herd, then another part, and eventually there’s nothing left to sell.”

“When the water is gone, people move. Families tied to farming and herding end up on the edges of cities, in informal settlements, doing whatever work they can find. This isn’t a gradual, planned transition. It’s a shock. People don’t just lose income; they lose the dignity that comes from staying on their land, using their skills and handing something real to their children,” he adds.

Official campaigns often fall hardest on those with the least protection: “There are really two categories of wells in Iran: the ones called ‘illegal’ on paper, and the ones that are untouchable in practice. The government loves to announce big numbers about sealing unauthorized wells. But on the ground, officials are very selective. They’re afraid of open conflict with some farmers, and they’re even more cautious when a well belongs to someone connected — a big agro-industrial unit, a religious foundation, a security body. Those actors are either formally exempt from enforcement or quietly warned before inspectors show up,” he explains.

“So you end up with a two-tier system. A small farmer might watch an official come and seal his shallow well in the morning, then see a deep industrial well up the road pumping all night. That double standard is one of the main reasons trust in any state ‘water policy’ has basically evaporated,” he adds.

Najmi sees those dynamics turning into a steady “slow displacement” that Iranian authorities rarely acknowledge in public: “And the consequences are devastating. Villages are emptying. Farmers are losing their livelihoods. Families are moving to the edges of already struggling cities. Water protests—from Khuzestan in 2021 to the farmers of Isfahan who camped in the dry riverbed—have become a new language of dissent.”

“These demonstrations begin with ‘We are thirsty,’ but they very quickly become political, because people understand this is not an act of God. It is a man-made disaster,” he stresses.

In cities, that rural collapse meets an economy already strained by sanctions, mismanagement, and high inflation. Power and water cuts, used to ration shrinking supplies,  now interrupt workdays and shut down small businesses, deepening a sense that the state cannot deliver even basic services.

Najmi argues that the technical know-how to address the crisis exists inside the country, but it is locked behind political red lines:

“Iran absolutely has the engineers and hydrologists to fix this. What it lacks is a governance structure willing to challenge entrenched interests and bring transparency to water allocation. Without accountability, without the rule of law, without public participation, the crisis will deepen — and the public knows it,” he says.

Iran’s environmental crisis is unfolding in a society still marked by the nationwide protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody in 2022. Those demonstrations were met with a lethal crackdown. Yet they left a lasting mark: in many cities, women continue to appear unveiled on public transport, in shopping streets, and, increasingly, at protests, despite renewed enforcement campaigns and the threat of fines or detention.

For Najmi, it is impossible to separate the water crisis from that broader wave of demands: “And this brings me to something essential. When people take to the streets in Iran, it is not only about a dress code or a headscarf. The headscarf became a symbol,  but the grievances go far deeper.”

“ Iranians are worried about the future of their water, their air, their food, their health, their children’s prospects, and the collapse of an economy captured by unaccountable networks. They are questioning whether the system that governs them is capable of protecting the very basics of life,” he says.

Najimi argues that water has become one of several triggers that expose deeper fissures in the Islamic Republic’s rule: “This is why you see protests spreading across provinces and social classes. Water is just one trigger among many, but it exposes everything: the corruption, the inequality, women’s forced hijab, the lack of voice, and the fear that the country is being pushed toward irreversible decline,” he explains.

In this context, the regime’s response to environmental scrutiny mirrors its reaction to political dissent. Kowsar says activists and researchers are increasingly treated as security threats: “The state response is a mix of embrace and punishment. Officials are very comfortable standing next to ‘safe’ experts, people who talk about technology and rainfall but don’t touch corruption, the water mafia, the IRGC, or ethnic discrimination.

“If you cross those red lines, the price can be high: harassment, loss of your job, prison. The Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation case is the most famous example. But there are many quieter stories: local activists and journalists who refused to take money from consultants or contractors, or who simply insisted on reporting what they saw, and then found themselves shut out, threatened, or charged,” he says.

The regime treats environmental information, in fact, almost like military intelligence, through resolution maps of subsidence, actual groundwater figures, and even satellite images. This year, after Israeli attacks in June and then when Israeli officials offered solutions to “fix” Iran’s water problems, many activists deliberately stepped back from public confrontation with the regime, knowing that a sharp critique could be framed as “helping the enemy.”

“When simply questioning a drying river can be twisted into treason, it shows two things very clearly: how deep the material crisis already is, and how threatening the regime finds the moral claim behind it— the claim that Iranians are entitled to land, water, and a life with dignity,” Kowsar notes.

Over the coming months, much will depend on whether winter rains arrive and how authorities manage shrinking reserves. But even a wet year would not resolve the underlying “water bankruptcy” that both experts describe.

Iran’s own data already point to a long-term pattern of declining precipitation, hotter summers, and intensifying droughts. At the same time, agriculture still consumes the vast majority of Iran’s water while contributing a relatively small share to GDP, and politically connected industries remain difficult to challenge.

Kowsar warns that without a fundamental change in governance—and in who benefits from water projects—the country will face more subsidence, more displacement, and more anger. He also sees the crisis spilling across borders and security files.

“Inside Iran, water has already become a spark,” he explains. “We’ve seen protests in Khuzestan, Isfahan, and other provinces where people are shouting about dry taps and dead rivers, and they’re not shy about naming officials or the Guards. Security forces can beat or jail individuals, but they can’t arrest a dried-out aquifer,” he says.

As shortages and land subsidence get worse, water anger will mix with other grievances — unemployment, corruption, ethnic discrimination.

Migration is the second big issue. When the land sinks, wells fail, and whole districts become unlivable, people have to move—meaning more slums and informal settlements around cities that are already struggling, more competition for jobs and basic services, and more social tension. If conditions keep deteriorating, people may want to leave the country for a better life, while the regime seems to focus elsewhere.

“As internal mismanagement shrinks Iran’s usable water, the temptation grows to blame neighbors or grab more water upstream. That doesn’t automatically lead to classic ‘water wars.’ Still, it does mean more diplomatic crises, more cross-border dust and pollution disputes, and more use of dams and river flows as bargaining chips—treating water as a weapon rather than as the basis for shared security and human dignity,” Kowsar notes.

For Najmi, any solution will depend on a shift in political incentives.

“Iran absolutely has the engineers and hydrologists to fix this. What it lacks is a governance structure willing to challenge entrenched interests and bring transparency to water allocation. Without accountability, without the rule of law, without public participation, the crisis will deepen — and the public knows it,” he says.

Iran’s water crisis is no longer a distant environmental issue. It is reshaping where people live, how they work, and whether they believe the state can still uphold its side of the social contract. As rivers like the Zayandeh Rud run dry under historic bridges and Tehran counts down to possible “Day Zero,” the combination of ecological stress, economic hardship, and demands for personal freedom is testing the regime’s resilience in new ways.

Kowsar believes any real way out would require the regime to confront the very networks that have benefited from the crisis: “If we’re honest, under the current political structure, the path is extremely narrow,” he says.

“The same actors who profit from bad water projects are parked right next to the levers of power: the IRGC and its engineering arms

, the big religious and economic foundations, and a security-bureaucratic machine that sees water first as a strategic asset, not as a public trust,” Kowsar adds.

Iran has to adapt to a new climate, build resilience, and mitigate damage, but that requires a different understanding of dignity. Not just ‘national pride’ in grand structures and record-breaking dams, but respect for people’s right to safe water,” he adds.

Najmi hears that demand echoing across social and environmental fronts: “The message on the streets is clear:  ‘We’re not simply asking for small reforms—we’re asking for a country that can provide dignity, sustainability and a real future.’”