(TheLibertyRevolution.com)- There is a huge crisis in Iran, and it has nothing to do with uranium enrichment, nuclear weapons or a nuclear deal with the United States.
It’s all about a lack of water.
There’s a huge hydrological crisis that’s been brewing in towns and cities throughout Iran recently, and citizens of the country aren’t happy with how the leaders of the Islamic Republic are handling it.
The protests began a few weeks ago when water shortages started because of huge droughts on top of government mismanagement of its water supply that has lasted years. In just a few weeks, there’s now huge civil unrest that’s spreading throughout all of Iran.
In the province of Khuzestan, which is rich with oil, there are more than 700 villages that have extreme difficulty getting any water at all. Residents there are reliant on the government delivering water to them by a truck.
The Iranian government has said that at least 110 cities are implementing a form of water rationing or have suffered disruptions in water supply just during this summer.
The government has for years allocated its resources poorly, on top of administering the supply poorly as well. In addition, the country has very outdated irrigation and agricultural systems that haven’t been tended to in decades.
Kaveh Madani, from Yale University, said the result of all of this is that Iran “is essentially water bankrupt.” Demand for water far outpaces the supply that the country has. As Madani said:
“Iran has been using its water resources unsustainably.”
Many experts have been warning for years that this could be a huge problem in Iran. A few years ago, the head of the country’s national center for strategic agriculture and water management, Mohammad Hossein Shariatmadar, said Iran “is only five years away from an all-encompassing water disaster as a result of five decades of mismanagement.”
Later that year, in 2018, 18 of the country’s lawmakers who came from the central part of the country resigned all at once in protest of the inequitable distribution of various resources in Iran.
Those lawmakers demanded that the government be more active to ensure each region of the country receives an equal share of water.
A year later, environmental think tank World Resources Institute said Iran was among the world’s most “water stressed” nations.
The WRI conducted a study that found that Iran consumes roughly 80% of the water resources it has on an annual basis. The situation ultimately means “even small dry shocks — which are set to increase due to climate change — can produce dire consequences.”
And that seems to be where Iran finds itself right now.
The government of Iran has responded in a way that many people could’ve predicted. Instead of doing something about the problem, they are arresting protesters to silence the voices of citizens throughout the country who are struggling without proper access to sufficient water.
