A bright ball of fire traveled along the Tehran boulevard, so fast that people initially thought it was a drone attack. But the video shows no explosion and, instead, a long tail of flames where a water canal used to be.

Multiple posts shared on social media show what look like drainage channels burning after Israeli airstrikes hit oil depots on the outskirts of Tehran last weekend. Bloomberg could not independently verify the videos.

The images are a brutal example of the state of Iran’s water system, which was already in a dire condition before the war. Tehran was on the verge of reaching so-called Day Zero for water at the end of last year, with reservoirs that supply the city of about 9 million running dry. In an unprecedented move, the country’s President Masoud Pezeshkian in November released a video warning that, even with rationing, people would have to evacuate Tehran if no rain fell soon.

The conflict is unfolding in the world’s most water-stressed region and in one of those most affected by climate change.

“Iran was already not able to adapt to any of the consequences that climate change brings for water,” said Susanne Schmeier, a professor of water cooperation, law and diplomacy at IHE Delft in the Netherlands who has studied the water crisis in Iran for years.

Since 2020, the nation has seen its worst drought on record. Years with very little rain are now 10 times more likely than they were before industrialization, according to World Weather Attribution, a scientific group that quantifies the effects of greenhouse gas pollution on extreme weather episodes.

The consequences of global warming are compounding decades of mismanagement by Iranian authorities, a water-intensive agricultural policy and sanctions that prevented imports of supplies essential for the maintenance of water infrastructure.

“Iran has had this water-security crisis building for decades,” said Tom Ellison, deputy director at the Center for Climate and Security, part of the nonprofit Council on Strategic Risks in Washington, DC. “Whatever comes out of this conflict, Iran is still going to have this worsening problem.”

It is the 14th most water-stressed country globally, and more than four-fifths of its 93 million people face extremely high water stress, said Liz Saccoccia, a water security analyst at the nonprofit World Resources Institute.

In modern times, Iran and other countries in the Gulf region have addressed water scarcity by building centralized systems that rely on large infrastructure like dams and desalination plants, said Swathi Veeravalli, an advisory board member at the Center for Climate and Security. That has allowed cities in the region to grow far beyond their ecological limits, she said.

“Drinking water is [Iran’s] most strategic vulnerability,” Veeravalli said. “These centralized water distribution systems are fantastic, except when they become single points of failure, which they’re becoming quickly right now.”

An Iranian desalination plant on the island of Qeshm was attacked March 7, and in response Iran attacked a water facility in Bahrain, raising fears of widespread assaults on water infrastructure. The U.S. has denied Iran’s accusation of blame for the Qeshm attack.

More than 40% of the world’s desalination capacity is in the Middle East. Unlike other countries in the region, though, Iran draws little of its drinking water from desalination plants — just 3%, compared with more than half in Saudi Arabia and 90% in Kuwait.

Since the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic has built water infrastructure with little regard for rates of use — despite a long history of inventive water management. In recent decades, the government built new infrastructure under systems marked by mismanagement, corruption and ad-hoc planning.

Contracts went to allies of the state and the military, a network that became known in Iran as the “water mafia.” The phrase gained international attention in May when Trump used it in a speech in Riyadh.

International sanctions exacerbated the situation by keeping multinational companies out of competition.

That meant the projects weren’t always planned systematically. “These dams and reservoirs weren’t really built within the framework of a cohesive national strategy,” said Eric Lob, a Florida International University professor of politics and international relations and a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “What you have today is a series or a network of dams and reservoirs that are operating well below capacity” — more than 90% below in some cases.

Crises are met with short-term, stopgap measures, Lob said, like water tankers or bottle distribution.

Shortages sparked protests in recent years, particularly in regions like Khuzestan, a southern province, and Isfahan, a central city. More broadly, water issues contributed to the anger that fueled larger demonstrations against the government, which led to the massacre of thousands of people in January, according to a report by the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a human rights nonprofit based in the U.S.

Some 90% of Iran’s water goes toward agriculture, which has gained importance under the current regime as it attempts to make the country self-sufficient. Farmers are growing crops that would be more efficiently grown elsewhere and imported, said Rick Hogeboom, executive director at the research nonprofit Water Footprint Network.

Farming also expanded to some of the country’s most arid areas, where crops need more water. Overuse depleted aquifers, tapped groundwater and consequently led to subsidence in Tehran and elsewhere.

“The big question is how long they can maintain this for when supplies are limited,” Hogeboom said, noting that data is difficult to access outside of the country. The water crisis is “a multi-pronged, multi-headed monster,” he said.

However long the conflict lasts, Iran will emerge from it less able to contend with the problem. As the region exits its annual rainiest season, and summer heat and dryness approach, the specter of 2023 looms: That August, it declared a two-day holiday because temperatures reached 122F (50C).

Climate projections suggest the country will experience higher temperatures year-round and declining rainfall, in a mid-range warming scenario. Investing in and planning for adaptation is crucial but out of reach.

“You have a government that’s struggling in a war, with no proper governance, no access to technology or finance to provide adaptation measures,” Schmeier said. “That makes things worse.”

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—With assistance from Golnar Motevalli.

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