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Facts Matter
Iran’s President Says Country Is Running Out of Water, Government Offices Shut Down, Extreme Rationing
00:12:33
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Transcript7 lines
- [00:00]
A
The nation of Iran, which, by the way, just as an aside, it's wild how fast the news cycle is moving right now, because if you go out into the street and you ask an average person about US Meaning America bombing Iran, they might say, oh, yeah, that was a while ago. I almost forgot about that. It's like, brother, that was last month that that happened. It's wild. Just as an example, if Canada bombed, surprise bombed, the nuclear sites here in the US we would be talking about that nonstop for many, many months. It would be like the Pearl harbor of the 21st century. But we did it last month, and already most people have forgotten that it even happened. Now, I shouldn't even compare Canada and Iran. There's a lot of nuance. But I'm just saying the news cycle is moving fast. Regardless, though, Iran is facing a lot of troubles right now besides the ones we know about, like US Bombing their nuclear sites, Israel killing most of their military leadership. Israel also bombing a lot of other sides besides the nuclear sites that we either destroyed or, if not destroyed, damaged. You also had sanctions getting ratcheted up with the second Trump administration. And on top of it all, there is a certain problem that I want to discuss today that's been brewing underneath the surface that most people outside of Iran aren't even aware of. And it's the fact that the country Iran is. Is running out of water. They're facing a severe water crisis. And I don't mean in the center of the country that's more arid, mountainous, and desert, but rather in the actual big cities where people live. Like, for instance, the capital city of Tehran, where water pressure is so low in many apartment buildings that taps are literally running dry for hours on end. People are desperately searching for water tanks, but to no avail because they just can't find them anywhere. They're all sold out.
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You.
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You have people hoarding every single drop of water that they can find. And even the reservoirs themselves are literally in the process of running dry. The situation has actually gotten so bad that in a Cabinet meeting just last Monday, you had the president of Iran, Mr. Masoud. I hope I'm pronouncing this name correctly. Peschechkian. He had to admit the following to the whole country. Quote, the water crisis is more serious than what is being talked about today. And if we do not make urgent decisions today, we. We will face a situation in the future that cannot be cured. We cannot continue this way. Further along in the same speech, he actually admitted that this water crisis was largely due to gross government mismanagement. Which really is a significant statement for a Iranian official to make, especially the President. Now, two days after he made that statement, you had the Iranian government, they came out and they shut down all government offices as well as all government services within both the capital city of Tehran as well as two dozen other cities across the whole country. They also created what's known as a three day weekend in an attempt to lower water and electricity usage also across the whole country. And actually to that end, you had Ms. Fatima Mohajirani. Sorry if I butchered that name. She was a government spokeswoman and she came out and suggested people to, quote, go on holiday in order to preserve water. And so all this suggests that this is a very serious problem on the ground. People cannot get water. They're doing everything they can to get water. It's not coming out of their taps. Nobody has water. And also the government is literally shutting down their offices and calling for a three day weekend in order for people to be able to preserve water and electricity, which we'll get to in a moment. Now, the reason for this water crisis is largely twofold. Firstly, there have been several years of severe droughts facing the country of Iran. In fact, the Ministry of Energy, they said that the annual rainfall in the country, it declined from an average of 11 inches per year down to 6 inches per year, creating what they called the worst drought in 50 years. This then led to reservoirs drying up, wells turning empty wetlands being turned into sand and dust storms. You had crops and livestock dying, lakes have dried up, so people cannot go fishing and they can't go swimming. And, and perhaps even more alarming than all of that, you have parts of the country which are actually starting to sink. For instance, in the capital city of Tehran, parts of the city are sinking at a rate of over 12 inches per year because the local water aquifers have just been sucked up. That is, I guess, what happens after five years of drought. However, the weather alone isn't to blame because aside from the heat and general lack of rain, the, the other reason that the country is facing a water crisis, as the President of Iran alluded to, is because of gross mismanagement of the country's water resources. Here's in fact how a recent article from the New York Times described. Environmental experts say that the water crisis stems from decades of mismanaging water resources and other misguided policies, including the overdevelopment of urban areas, draining of groundwater for farming, and excessive construction of dams. Iran has also piped water to the central desert regions to to feed water intensive industries such as steel making owned by the government. Now this general mismanagement of the country's water supply, it can further be broken down into two different parts. The first part is what's been colloquially called the water mafia. This is a pretty large network in Iran which is comprised of several different groups. You have political elites, you have contractors, you have several engineering firms as well as IRGC affiliates. These, these are groups affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And this group, that's again colloquially known as the water mafia, they are behind many of the large scale water diversion projects, many of the dam construction projects, and the groundwater extraction projects throughout the whole country, which on the surface seems fine, it seems like general development. However, Iran has the opposite problem that we do here in the us. In the US it's an endless amount of red tape to do anything. If you are building a new project, it might take you 10 years just to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops. However, in Iran it's the exact opposite, where as long as you're in the right circles, maybe you grease the right palms, you can do anything. You can get projects done without any environmental assessments. And often what will wound up happening is that the projects benefit a small circle of well connected people, the people in this mafia, to the detriment of the common people who living in the cities, the countryside, as well as the farmers who also live either in the countryside or sort of the suburb area. So for example, when water is taken and it's piped over to the central part of the country that's more arid and desert in order to manufacture steel, well, that water is no longer available for use by the people from which it came, which naturally enough includes the farmers. Which actually then leads us to the second part of the water mismanagement problem, which is the extremely inefficient agricultural practices still being used in Iran. If you look at it at a high level, roughly 90% of Iran's water is used in farming, which makes sense. I mean, food is important and food naturally takes water to grow. However, much of that water is actually lost due to waste in the form of either outdated irrigation misallocation and inefficient farming techniques that are literally stuck in the 1970s. Also, the Central government, they've been focusing on having the country produce more water intensive crops, things like pistachios, sugarcane, as well as rice, which have naturally then increased the average amount of water that's necessary to grow 1 calorie of food. And so you take that all together, this Mismanagement of the water supply strain the overall system significantly. And you combine that with the most recent heat wave that rolled across the country and, and it just became a disaster. As you might have read, one day last month in July, a part of Iran saw a heat index of 149 degrees Fahrenheit, making it quite literally one of the hottest places on earth. And that most latest heat wave, it created two additional problems. The remaining waters in the reservoir began to evaporate even more. And at the same time the people living in Iran, they had to deal with this extreme heat at the same time that the remaining water was evaporating. And so you combine that with everything else and it created the situation we're seeing now. People in the cities don't have regular access to water. People living in apartments can't even get water through their taps. The government is shutting down their offices across the whole country. Farmers are running out of water. And besides all that, you have the other problems like rolling blackouts, skyrocketing inflation and the aftermath of that 12 day war with Israel and I guess also the United States. Although of course we never declared war, but we did bob them. So depends on how you look at it. Regardless of that though, what it means is that it's been a rough summer for the Iranian people. Now of course I'm not an expert on Iran at all, but I did have a phenomenal opportunity last week. The CEO of the Persian edition of the Epoch Times was actually here in New York. And while she was here, I was able to grab her for an interview over on my other show, which is called Primetime. And let me show you a small snippet of that interview where she sort of lays out for us the situation that Iran is currently facing.
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People are looking to store water like they're searching for every drop of water. Just so when it's on, you're filling your bucket. Exactly. Defeats. Yeah. And I want to say something about this electricity outage is that something new is happening to in 2021 Supreme Leader allowed to have this cryptocurrency minings. And then there is. Say no more. Electricity in Iran is so cheap. Right. And then there are these farms that mostly are kind of affiliated again with irgc and all the benefits goes to IRGC that they are kind of doing. You know there is around 1800 these mining miners in Iran devices. And also there are Chinese nationals working on some of the farms because it's banned in China. So the miners come to Iran with cheap electricity and they can license Them, they can work there. And this is also a way to circumvent the sanctions, right? Because Iran foreign currency reserves, it's getting lower and lower compared to 2018. It was 120 billion billion. Now they cannot sell oil and they cannot easily provide the oil just to Chinese companies. So now it's shrinking to 33 billion in 2025. So this means that they need some way to get around the sanctions. And this is a very smart way to do that.
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So that's like a good example of how the water mafia operates, right? You have these Chinese bitcoin miners and they want to come, they want to, they can't do bitcoin mining in China and so they set up shop in Iran and they, they bend the rules to bring the water to, to help the bitcoin miners operate, right? With, with either the electricity or whatever the, the cooling. And it's like a small circle. It's not really helping the population, it's just helping the, the people making those deals. Right. There's another case I read about steel manufacturing. The same, same thing, right? Like there was a steel manufacture owned by the government. They diverted water that was supposed to be for the people in order to manufacture the steel and that's it. And you know, everybody got rich except for the people, I guess who needed the water in Tehran or any other of these cities.
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B
Yes, there is one. No, it's not in Tehran actually. That's, there are two steel manufacturers in the province of Isfahan, which is the river that people love that river. But for many months of the year they stop the water in the river and it's happening for many years. Like it's, at least I know, I remember from 20 years ago that they're stopping the water for many months to kind of divert the water to somewhere else. It can go to steel or can go to some other provinces for agriculture as well. So this is a part of, type of mismanagement that we're talking about.
- [12:05]
A
If you'd like to watch that full clip, meaning that full interview, I'll throw a link to it. It'll be right there in the description box below. I'll also throw in the description box several resources on. If you want to read further about the water mafia as well as what the Iranian people are currently facing on the ground, some first person accounts of what it's like currently living in a situation without water. And then until next time, I'm your host Roman from the epoch times. Stay informed and most importantly, stay free.