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Rows of worshippers, some with their faces raised toward the sky, others with their heads bowed, prayed for rain at a mosque in Tehran earlier this month. Theirs is an increasingly desperate plea. The city is grappling with a water crisis so severe the Iranian president has suggested people may need to evacuate. The weeks tick by, still the rains don't arrive.
There are fears water may run out completely in this vast, bustling city, whose metropolitan area is home to around 15 million people. Iran, a mostly semi-arid country, is no stranger to water shortages, but rarely have they affected Tehran, home to most of the country's rich and powerful.
The roots of Iran's water woes echo those in many other parts of the world: decades of over-extraction; aging, leaky infrastructure; a proliferation of dams erected across rivers; mismanagement; accusations of corruption. Through it all runs the thread of climate change, driving hotter, drier weather, meaning year after year, dried-out reservoirs are not replenished.
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