"These (IRGC and government) privileged neighborhoods maintain numerous private swimming pools and spacious green spaces."

Sanctions surely aren’t helping

Geographically speaking, over 80% of Iran’s land is classified as arid or semi-arid, and it is likely to face over 5°C of warming by the end of the century: the impacts of climate change will likely be more severe in Iran than the regional average. The region suffers from extreme weather including both droughts and flooding, seismic activity in the form tectonic uplift, particularly near the Makran coast, and constant attacks: economic attack by sanction, cyber attack on energy infrastructure, and lately even kinetic attack from neighbors. The fact that the regime hasn’t collapsed is a testament to Persian, Iranian and Islamic culture, and I hope its people find ways to prosper when the deck is so stacked against them.

I wonder what happened...

It is a crying shame and the Iranians deserve better. At the moment 16 million people may find themselves without water in the near future. I'm lost for words.

If one positive thing could be found in this situation it might finally be the thing that brings down the regime. I think it's fair to say this year has been an annus horribilis for them.

Gee, I wonder what possibly could have happened over the last 50 or so years that might have damaged their prosperity.

Their government spends itself into poverty fighting proxy wars against Israel both directly and indirectly through sanctions. It’s a theocracy so economics is not the most important thing to their leaders.

They are governed by Islamic fundamentalists ?

.

it would be one of the largest sudden migrations of people in history.

to put this in perspective, 13M people fled during the Syrian Civil War. 5.7M people fled Ukraine. The evacuation of New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina was 1.2M people.

Well, the actual spelling is لتيان, so it comes down to how you choose to romanize it.

In a year, with massive sanctions, for this many people? No. Not a chance.

Not in the course of the next few weeks.

This situation was avoidable but it required investment years ago. Kind of too late now.

Pipes to quench a 10-million city through 100 kms of mountains (140km by road), going up 2 kms from the sea level? That's more than Israel's max distance from the sea (and it's mostly flat).