Will the city of Teheran be abandoned next week, due to drought?

Factual Questions
1

A few weeks ago, I noticed a couple of astounding headlines.
Iran is in critical trouble with water supplies, and its capital city may have to be abandoned within weeks.

Since then, I haven’t seen any serious talk about what seems like a truly massive news story.

Eight years ago, there was a water problem in CapeTown,South Africa, and a new phrase entered the language: “zero day”–meaning the day when there simply will be no water left in the reservoir, and the city will be unlivable. Cape Town is not a city of international importance, but the story was reported extensively, because it would have been a very important event—the first time in modern history that a city would have to be abandoned.

But now, it appears to be happening again. And unlike CapeTown, Teheran is a city of international importance. Nuclear importance, in fact. A very large city (16 million population) and the capital of a near-nuclear power allied with Putin, proudly at war with the West.

So–is this as huge a story as it seems to me?
The facts seem scary. And the potential for serious political fallout would seem to be a major issue. Plus the simple physical challenge of 16 million people having to migrate.

But there isn’t much discussion in the press.

Here are some links:
NPR headline, from 3 weeks ago:
**Iranian officials warn Tehran could run out of water in weeks\**

NYTimes headline from 1 week ago:
Tehran is at risk of running out of water within weeks (paywalled, so I quote one paragraph)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/iran-water-crisis-drought.html

And a RadioFreeEurope link from a week ago:

2

Say what? I could be wrong on this because it’s just based on the first numbers that came up on Google, but it looks like Cape Town handles more trade in a year than all of Iran. It seems pretty internationally important to me.

3

wow…I didn’t know that. Thanks.

4

And Capetown wasn’t abandoned. It’s still going along just fine.

@MrDibble and/or @scudsucker could tell us more about how the Capetown “zero day” event played out and the aftermath thereof.

5

Also, it’s Tehran, not Teheran.

6

The lack of updates suggests imminent doom wasn’t quite as imminent, however bad the outlook.

Well, mostly.

7

Well, technically, it’s تهران

8

I was wondering about this. Hebrew doesn’t use the Latin alphabet, so ‘Teheran’ can’t be just the spelling used in Israel. But the Israelis on the board consistently seem to spell it that way.

9

It’s “Teherán” in Spanish.

10

Wiki points out that Teheran was the common English spelling from ~1800 to the onset of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. At which time Tehran became the favored English spelling.

11

It more or less falls into that “What can anyone else do?” category of internal issues. I mean, it’s not something anyone else did to Iran or Tehran, and it’s not something most other countries are able to help with, and the ones who could, like the US, are not interested.

So whatever’s going to happen is going to happen, and it may or may not get reported in the news. Just like that earthquake in Afghanistan, nobody much cares.

12

I assume even building an emergency pipeline, there are not a lot of nearby bodies of fresh water. I see a reservoir in the mountains(?) about 25 miles northeast, and another about 120 miles northwest. I presume the nearer one is the city water source that is running out?

13

Is the water mafia a big part of the problem?

Iran has been exploring/building desalinization infrastructure for decades, but that apparently only goes as far as the pipelines do.

14

And where are they supposed to go? 16 million people is a lot of people. (D’oh!)

15

One thing about water is that use is highly elastic. You only need about a gallon per day per person. The US uses 156 gal/day. India uses 38 gal/day. Mali uses 3. If things became truly desperate, it’s likely that there would still be enough water for survival. Plants would die, bathing would be rare, clothes would get dirty, and dishes would be wiped, not washed. Life would kinda suck. But probably few would die of thirst. Even in a big city like Tehran, you could even ship the water in by truck if required (a couple thousand per day).

16

And most water use is in industry.

17

Overall, agriculture. But food can be imported as well. Industry is typically #2, but if the choice is between having a job and having water to drink, the job can probably wait. You aren’t going to have a job if you’ve evacuated the city anyway.

18

Actual population of Tehran is more like 10 million, metro area is 14 million. Still a lot of people, but not 16 million. /nitpick

19

Looking at press accounts, 1949 was the tipping point in spelling where “Tehran” became the slightly more common spelling. However, by 1960 it was favored by almost 3:1, and by 1970, almost 5:1.

20

Ha ha ha.

We greatly reduced our already-low water usage, and explored other options like desalination and increased groundwater, and then the rains came. That’s about it. The aftermath is that even ordinary people are more aware of current water levels in dams and such, we’re very much now a culture of not unnecessarily flushing toilets, and water consumption has not risen to pre-crisis levels despite population increase.

There were a couple of threads about it: