As Tehran faces potential evacuation amid its worst drought in modern history—with reservoirs at historic lows and only one millimeter of rain this year—a theological interpretation is gaining traction both within and outside Iran: the nation’s water crisis may be divine judgment for its decades-long campaign to destroy Israel. While Iranian clerics blame the drought on domestic moral failures, others point to a starker biblical pattern.
Tehran is nearing a full-scale ecological breakdown, but the most potent response inside Iran has not come from engineers or planners. It has come from the streets, fields, and mosques, where tens of thousands have turned to prayer as the capital dries out. Reservoirs feeding the city are at historic lows. Only 1 millimeter of rain has fallen this year. With five consecutive years of drought behind it, and with November’s snow season replaced by twenty-degree afternoons, Iran’s leaders are warning of evacuations and even the relocation of the capital. Yet the most visible nationwide reaction has been the surge in religious ceremonies pleading for rain.
These gatherings now define life across Iran. Villages, towns, and university campuses organize mass salat al-istisqa—prayers for rain—echoing older Iranian memories of divine intervention. State media recounts the spring of 1944, when residents of Qom prayed for three days under the watch of British occupiers and the skies opened as soon as the crowds dispersed. Today, those scenes are being reenacted on a far larger scale. People kneel in dry riverbeds. Clerics lead processions to barren fields. Children are brought forward to recite passages calling for rahmah, mercy.
At the same time, the drought has ignited a theological struggle inside the regime. Ayatollah Mohsen Araki declared that “blatant debauchery on our streets” has invited divine displeasure. Grand Ayatollah Javadi Amoli warned that national “sins take away the grounds for mercy.” Members of parliament blamed the crisis on the government’s failure to enforce compulsory hijab laws. Supporters of President Masoud Pezeshkian pushed back, mocking the claim by pointing to Europe’s green landscapes and asking why secular nations receive steady rainfall.
These debates now overshadow the scientific explanations that hydrologists have issued for decades. Snow cover is down 98.6 percent nationwide compared with last year. Temperatures in Tehran are far above seasonal norms. Over twenty provinces have not seen a single drop of rain more than fifty days into the rainy season. Cloud-seeding aircraft have been dispatched, though officials admit the method cannot reverse six years of drought. Bottled water is rationed. Midnight pressure cuts leave taps dribbling. Millions of residents wait for forecasts of “rain-producing systems” with the urgency of wartime announcements.
Tehran’s collapse did not arrive suddenly. Iran’s central Markazi basin holds less than a third of the nation’s freshwater but supports more than half its population. Tehran has grown from 4.9 million residents in 1979 to nearly ten million today. Water use regularly reaches 400 liters per person per day. A third of the city’s water leaks away before reaching consumers. Agriculture, subsidized as a pillar of national self-sufficiency, consumes 90 percent of Iran’s water. The aquifer beneath the capital is being drained, legally and illegally, far beyond its ability to recharge.
The crisis comes at a moment of political strain. Iran is still unsteady after the war with Israel and the United States in June. E3 sanctions were reimposed in September. The supreme leader is eighty-six and frail. Past water shortages have triggered protests. Officials warn privately that new unrest could erupt if supplies collapse.
President Pezeshkian’s statement that Iran “no longer has a choice” but to move the capital marks a historic threshold. Environmental collapse has forced migrations throughout history, but no modern nation has relocated its seat of government due to drought. Millions now wait for rain that may not come.
Iran’s clerics have seized on the crisis as a call to faith, but the substance of their message reveals a deeper problem. A regime that channels religious devotion toward policing women’s hair instead of repairing collapsing infrastructure turns faith into a diversion. Iran’s water system did not fail because of cultural looseness. It failed because the state diverted resources to its regional proxies, empowered networks known as the “water mafia,” protected the excessive water use of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and ignored warnings from its own experts.
The mass prayer gatherings across Iran are sincere expressions of fear and hope. But they are also a sign of a state losing legitimacy. When a nation’s rulers cannot deliver water, the population turns upward rather than toward its own ministries.
The Guardian covered the drought with the headline, “Climate crisis or a warning from God?” Indeed, if the Iranians believe the drought is the result of divine wrath, they should reconsider their relationship with the Jewish state. This was expressed in a practical political manner during the Iranian drought in 2019 when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made a video in which he offered Israel’s water technology to the Iranian people. To facilitate this, he established a Persian-language website with information about water shortage. Netanyahu emphasized that the conflict with Israel was due to the current regime and not the Iranian people.
But this also has deep roots in Jewish sources, which state that the entire world receives its sustenance, spiritual and physical, via the land of Israel. The rain that falls around the world is determined on Tu B’Shevat and in the land of Israel. This is reflected in Israel’s leadership in water technology. We are the means by which Hashem (God, literally ‘the name’) gives water to the entire world. The basis of rain, of course, is spiritual; God’s connection to the world.”
In Melachim Aleph (I Kings), rain is tied directly to national conduct and leadership. When Elijah confronted Ahab, he said: “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be no dew or rain except at my word” (I Kings 17:1). The Sages taught that moral corruption at the top of society can dry out the blessings that sustain a nation. Rain in the Bible is not merely a meteorological event. It reflects whether a society is aligned with or defying the order set by the Creator.
