Iran has always been a dry country, getting just a third of the rain that most places do on average. But in the past few years, things have gone from bad to worse, and the country is now in its fifth straight year of drought. What was once a slow crisis is now spiraling fast.

Iran’s environmental collapse is no longer the slowly worsening problem that leaders ignored for decades. It’s here, it’s accelerating, and it’s threatening the very survival of the country. This summer’s brutal drought, layered over decades of mismanagement and the regime’s obsession with regional conflict, has laid bare a stark reality: Iran is nearly out of water—and almost out of time.

Iran’s environmental collapse is no longer the slowly worsening problem that leaders ignored for decades. It’s here, it’s accelerating, and it’s threatening the very survival of the country. This summer’s brutal drought, layered over decades of mismanagement and the regime’s obsession with regional conflict, has laid bare a stark reality: Iran is nearly out of water—and almost out of time.

Iran has always been a dry country, getting just a third of the rain that most places do on average. But in the past few years, things have gone from bad to worse, and the country is now in its fifth straight year of drought. What was once a slow crisis is now spiraling fast.

From 2003-2019, when Iran’s population was still under 90 million and rainfall was higher than it is today, the country lost nearly 211 billion cubic meters of water. That’s almost twice its renewable supply, the amount of water that is naturally replenished, at today’s levels.

Mos