After living through a 12-day war with Israel, the people of Iran have been hit with a second crisis, as devastating heat, a prolonged drought and decades of mismanagement culminate in severe water shortages.
Water and energy outages are now a daily occurrence as the country edges closer to "day zero", with warnings Tehran's water supply could run dry in just weeks.
"We are talking about a possible day zero in Tehran," Professor Kaveh Madani, Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health said.
"We are facing this situation of no water and no electricity during extreme heat and on top of that, we are seeing wildfires here and there, dust storms, and so on."
Tehran's population of 16.8 million people had previously been immune to the impacts of drought, with a large portion of their clean drinking supply coming from groundwater.
"Iran is having one more very dry year, even drier than the most recent dry years, and the reservoirs are empty," Madani said.
"Surface water is not sufficient and Iran has been draining a lot of groundwater in many areas, so the groundwater level is low."
In July, ongoing heatwaves with temperatures exceeding 50 degrees prompted Iranian authorities to ask people to conserve water.
The Iranian regime even made the drastic move to create a public holiday in an attempt to reduce energy and water demands.
Tehran's provincial water management company called for a reduction of "at least 20 per cent" to help ease the shortages.
Madani, who previously worked as the deputy head of Iran's Department of Environment, said the fact the regime was being so open about the crisis was an indicator of just how serious the situation was.
"The government, given all the problems that they're facing, doesn't have the, preference or tendency to announce such a big thing, such a distressful thing," he said.
"The public don't necessarily react in a positive way because they remind those in charge about those warnings, about all the things that the scientists said years ago.
"And they ask, why did you dismiss them?"
'Water mafia'
While the five-year drought has played a large part in Iran's water woes, the crisis has been amplified by decades of overuse and mismanagement.
The mass construction of dams by the Iranian government in recent years has caused many areas downstream to dry out, including Isfahan, where farmers have been protesting a lack of water supply for years.
Around 90 per cent of Iran's water is used in agriculture, with current irrigation practices highly inefficient.
Professor Peter Scales from the University of Melbourne travelled to Lake Urmia in the country's north a decade ago, on a failed project to restore the region's largest lake, which dried out in 2023.
"In an environment where water use is uncapped, it allows modern farming practices to exploit the system pretty heavily," he said.
"They want to exploit water resources that normally are not exploitable, so they're not doing what we would call a mass balance of their water."
It is something US President Donald Trump highlighted in a speech in Saudi Arabia in May this year.
"Iran's leaders have managed to turn green farmland into dry deserts, as their corrupt water mafia — it's called the water mafia — causes droughts and empty riverbeds," Trump said.
"They get rich, but they don't let the people have any of it."
While terms like "water mafia" might catch the public's attention, Madani said it took away from the complexity of the problems facing Iran.
"You can create conspiracy theories for everything and explain everything through combining any word with 'mafia,'" he said
"What we see in Iran is the collective outcome of many bad decisions, by many good and bad people."
A water-stressed region
Countries in the Middle East are among the top water-stressed in the world, according to data from the World Resources Institute.
"It's getting hotter, it's drier and water is really at a premium in terms of reliability and availability," Mohammed Mahmoud, lead for Middle East Climate and Water Policy at the United Nations University, said.
"The facts are, this region is going to accelerate in terms of warming — higher than other parts of the world.
"Fresh water resources are going to be stressed more than other parts of the world."
[Map]Madani said the role of climate change in Iran was undeniable.
"We see more frequent and intense droughts, but also more frequent and intense floods, wildfires, heat and other extreme events.
"We see this in many places around the world, and Iran is no exception."
But he said to blame the water crisis in Iran solely on climate change was reductionist.
"The house is already on fire, you might not see it, climate change just adds fuel to that," he said.
"All of a sudden, you see something that you cannot deny."
Madani said it would take a crisis like Tehran running out of water for real change to occur.
"The tendency of governments is to delay transformative action because they're costly politically, they're hard to implement.
"Ironically, we need these crises and extremes for improving our management systems. That's sad, but it's very true."
Temperatures soar
Iran is not the only country in the region dealing with prolonged drought and heat: the highest temperatures on the planet this week were recorded in Iraq, where the mercury hit 52 degrees on multiple days in a row.
Türkiye registered 50.5 degrees last Saturday — a nationwide record — in its south-east as it battles devastating wildfires.
In the southern Iraqi city of Basra, the heat is unrelenting. Temperatures are forecast to remain above 47 degrees for at least another week, and the capital, Baghdad, will be only a few degrees cooler.
While Iraq is no stranger to extreme heat, the United Nations lists the country as among the most vulnerable to climate change, citing water scarcity, drought, and extreme temperatures.
Like Iran, the country is suffering through one of its driest periods, with Iraq's Ministry of Water Resources reporting water storage is down to just 8 per cent of full capacity.
Authorities blame reduced river flows in part on upstream dams built in neighbouring Iran and Türkiye, which Iraq says have dramatically shrunk the once-mighty Tigris and Euphrates, whose waters have been crucial for irrigation for millennia.
"The reality is, when there's not enough water, what ends up happening is those countries upstream will tend to hoard it or save it to their benefit as much as they can," Mahmoud said.
Geopolitical tensions
As water scarcity has worsened across the region, so too have geopolitical tensions.
"Fortunately, and hopefully this remains the case, countries have not gone to war and conflict just over water," Mahmoud said.
"But it does cause complications in terms of geopolitical relations."
Mahmoud said conflicts also limited the ability of governments and communities to respond when crises hit.
"We have conflict issues across the region and I'll even throw in the civil war in Sudan, for example," he said.
"They cause a disruption in the ability for those countries and communities that are affected by conflict to react adequately."
Heat is adding to an already dire situation in Gaza, with a lack of water and shelter one more "obstacle to survival", according to Mahmoud.
"In a really perverse way, it's probably lowest on the list of things that people in Gaza are tackling to just survive day to day.
"We're entering the warmest part of the year and so survival, in terms of that alone, becomes a challenge.
"The reality is there is no infrastructure … to mitigate issues of exposure, whether it's high temperatures or whether it's freezing temperatures."
Learning from the past
Despite the dire situation across the Middle East, Mahmoud remained optimistic that the region could adapt in a worsening climate.
"Things are bad and things are amplifying because of climate change. But this region has naturally, for centuries and centuries, been in a state of heat and water stress," he said.
"The region is capable of adapting and has for centuries. A lot of that obviously has to do with being more efficient with our water use."
Madani agreed that the history of the region could hold some answers.
"Persians survived for thousands of years in the dry part of the world by using different technologies of groundwater extraction. And they had laws and institutions and settings that were working.
"Through the process of modernisation, if you will, they disrupted that old system."
But he was pessimistic about Iran finding a way out of the crisis any time soon.
"You have decided to fight the world … those who lose are the people of Iran, the ecosystem of Iran, the nature of Iran.
"That means more deforestation, mining pollution, sand and dust storms, desertification, rivers drying up, declining aquifers, and that's what we see. It's very sad."
