B-Man Posted 32 minutes ago Posted 32 minutes ago (Non-Iran/Israel) Events in Iran are moving fast. Tehran Faces Evacuation As Water Supplies Reach Zero and the City Sinks Into the Desert Mother Nature may accomplish something that neither the U.S. nor Israel could ever have contemplated: the evacuation of Tehran's 9.7 million inhabitants. Iran is currently experiencing its fifth consecutive year of drought, and the autumnal rainfall is about a quarter of that in 2024, that would be two millimeters. In short, Tehran is facing a "Day Zero" catastrophe. "Zero day" is probably shortly after January 1. The Amir Kabir Dam, once a vital lifeline holding over 160,000 acre-feet, now languishes at a mere 8 percent capacity, or about a two-week supply for Tehran. In terms of reservoir capacity, isn’t huge. It is about the size of the Canyon Dam on Texas’s Guadalupe River or the Smith Mountain Dam on Virginia’s Roanoke River. But when you plop it down in the middle of the desert and make your nation’s capital and a lot of your agriculture dependent on it for water, it takes on a significance all its own. The other reservoirs in the five-dam system that supplies Tehran with water — Latyan, Lar, Mamloo, and Taleqan — are in equally poor condition. At Latyan, only half of the current 10 percent fill can be used. Lar is at one percent, Mamloo at seven percent, and Taleqan, which is about twice the size of Amir Kabir, is at 30 percent capacity. Iran is drought-prone; indeed, it is the middle of the most severe drought in 57 years, but that isn’t what is causing the current crisis. It is the logical and foreseeable outcome of decades of environmental neglect and Soviet-style mismanagement that has turned a naturally arid climate into a national emergency. Iran’s groundwater has been depleted, primarily in an effort to surge agriculture to deal with a booming population. Tehran is sinking at a rate of 25 cm per year as the aquifers collapse. This poses a threat to utilities, subways, and the structural integrity of buildings. It is hard to imagine that the settling hasn't caused leaks in water mains. To be clear, this is not a Tehran problem; this is an Iran problem. The drought affects the whole country, and 30 of Iran’s 31 provinces are experiencing land subsidence due to unchecked groundwater extraction. https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/11/10/the-end-is-near-tehran-faces-evacuation-as-water-supplies-reach-zero-and-the-city-sinks-into-the-desert-n2196051 .
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