Iran’s second-largest city, Mashhad, is facing an acute water emergency after dam reservoirs feeding the city fell below three percent capacity, according to Iranian state and local media. Officials warn that without rainfall or improved inflows from neighboring Afghanistan, the city’s supply could soon collapse. It’s happened before that Iranian generals have accused Israel for stealing their clouds.

Iranians on X are talking about murdered bodies showing up in the dried sediment. “Reports that at least 74 bodies have been found in the Karaj Dam in Iran, all thought to be executed anti-regime dissidents,” says X commentator Nioh Berg.

“Because of the drought and lack of rain, this dam has dried up almost completely and revealed a MASS GRAVE. The victims had their hands and feet tied, and they were rolled into rugs, as well as wrapped in plastic. Their murderers didn’t account for the drought, and thought the bodies would never be found. This news story was published and then quickly deleted by regime media, after they realised it’s probably their own doing.”

“The water storage in Mashhad’s dams has now fallen to less than three percent,” Hossein Esmaeilian, the chief executive of the water company in Iran’s second largest city by population, tells ISNA news agency. He adds that “the current situation shows that managing water use is no longer merely a recommendation — it has become a necessity.”

Mashhad lies in Razavi Khorasan Province in northeastern Iran, a semi-arid region dependent on a small network of dams for drinking water, agriculture, and limited power generation. The most critical of these are the Doosti (Friendship) Dam, built jointly by Iran and Turkmenistan on the Hari (Harirud) River; and the smaller Kardeh and Torogh dams that directly supply the urban network.

The Doosti Dam, completed in 2004 near the Turkmen border, was designed to provide up to 60 % of Mashhad’s potable water. But its inflows have plummeted after Afghanistan’s Taliban government inaugurated the Pashdan Dam upstream on the Hari River near Herat earlier this year. Iranian officials accuse Kabul of violating cross-border water agreements and cutting off critical flows. The Iranian daily Jomhouri-e Eslami warned this week that the new Afghan dam “threatens the very survival” of Mashhad’s reservoirs.

The Hari River — about 1,000 kilometers long — originates in Afghanistan’s central highlands, flows west through Herat into Iran, and ends in Turkmenistan’s Karakum Desert. Historically, its seasonal floods recharged aquifers and sustained farming along the Iranian border. But with multiple new Afghan dams under Taliban control, less water is reaching Iran’s northeastern provinces, even as rising temperatures and a prolonged regional drought accelerate evaporation.

Related: The Taliban kills Japanese water hero

Within Iran, years of poor water management compound the crisis. Kardeh and Torogh dams, both built in the 1970s, are now near “dead storage,” with barely enough volume for municipal use. Over-extraction of groundwater around Mashhad — home to more than three million people and millions of pilgrims annually — has further destabilized the system, causing land subsidence and salinization of wells.

Iran has also been spending billions normalizing terror by finding Palestinians to join Hamas, Lebanese to join the Hezbollah and for the Yemenites to become Houthis. Paying for conflict and not supporting your own people, comes with a high cost. The Iranian regime hates Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel so much that it will sacrifice anything in its global jihad.

Experts say the situation underscores both climate vulnerability and political risk in transboundary basins. Iran’s government is pressing for negotiations with the Taliban over shared water rights, as Afghanistan pulls the plug on its water by creating its own dams, but cooperation remains uncertain amid border skirmishes and mistrust.

If inflows from Afghanistan remain restricted and rainfall fails again this winter, Mashhad could face mandatory rationing and long-term aquifer collapse — a warning sign for the entire region as climate change and geopolitics converge in Iran’s drying east. Could we see a bigger conflict between Iran and Afghanistan? A good possibility. Similar tensions have been brewing for years between Ethiopia building the GERD dam and Egypt which is being denied water upstream.

If you’ve ever travelled to cities like Amman, Jordan, the water-stressed city shows how life goes on with water stress. Some city folks get water piped in once a week, but because municipal supply is so limited, many households, businesses, and institutions buy extra water from private tanker trucks and store this in private reservoirs so they never run out.

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Now it’s even easier for hydro companies to build destructive dams in Turkey. Real estate for 13 different hydroelectric projects in 12 provinces can now be seized at any time by Turkey’s Energy Market Regulatory Agency (EPDK) and State Waterworks Authority (DSİ), thanks to a recent decision by the prime minister’s cabinet, as reported in Bianet, Turkey’s independent media agency.

Hydroelectric projects: A matter of national defense?

The cabinet invoked Turkey’s “Nationalization Law” to pass the ruling, even though the law is only supposed to apply in extraordinary circumstances, when homeland security is on the line.

“In times of war, [authorities] used to nationalize properties, but there really was a war in those times. Now, the only war is for investment,” said Cömert Uygar Erdem, an environmental lawyer.

Countless people may be pushed off their land to make way for a hydroelectric project in their area thanks to the ruling. The projects for which property seizure has been authorized are spread all over the country, from Black Sea provinces Zonguldak and Ordu to the southern province of Adana to Erzurum in the northwest.

The use of the homeland defense law to authorize land grabs in these areas is even more absurd when one considers recent remarks by Energy Secretary Taner Yıldız (in Turkish) that Turkey “has no problem producing more energy than it consumes at this time.”

Hydro’s checkered legal history in Turkey

Turkey’s highest administrative court had already prevented the cabinet from giving the EPDK the power to nationalize property in 2004, because it would constitute a “transfer of authority”, according to Erdem.

More than 100 of the approximately 120 suits that have been filed against property seizure for hydro development have won, suggesting that legally, hydroelectric companies are often on the wrong side of the law when they try to seize land.

But this time, the cabinet issued separate rulings for each of the  13 projects it wanted to accelerate, directly authorizing the land grab rather than delegating it to the EPDK.

“People will be forced to emigrate and deprived of their properties when [authorities] confiscate their real estates. There were already similar measures in force until [now…] The process is going to accelerate due to this decision, and the destruction of nature will [gather speed,]” said Erdem.

A record of damage to humans and the environment

Last year, the United Nations released a report condemning Turkey’s hydroelectric development plans because of the harm they would cause human communities and ecosystems.

The planned projects have become a major source of contention between Turkey and Iraq, whose inhabitants would directly suffer as a result of changes in the water flow from the Tigris and Euphrates. Earlier this year, Georgia’s Green Party warned that a planned dam in northeastern Turkey could similarly impact Georgia and Azerbaijan by diverting the flow of the biggest water artery in the Southern Caucasus.

Turkey’s hydroelectric habit has already tainted its relations with neighbors. If the cabinet’s ruling stands, the government will be faced with a new population of landless citizens, driven off their property by the greed of hydroelectricity companies. Is that really a situation they want to create?

:: Bianet

Read more about hydroelectricity in Turkey:

Turkey’s Early Hydroelectric Dams Featured in Exhibit
Hydroelectric Dam In Turkey May Cause Environmental Catastrophe In Georgia
Turkish Water Projects Stirring Resentment Around The Region
Turkey’s Dams Are Violating Human Rights, UN Report Says

Image via 10b travelling

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