Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian not too long ago warned that Tehran would possibly quickly face evacuation—and even relocation—due to water shortages. His remarks sparked panic, however that is hardly the primary time officers have floated shifting the capital.
The thought has perennially resurfaced, often after earthquake scares—after the 1990 Manjil-Rudbar quake and later after Bam in 2003, when the dimensions of deaths and destruction pushed senior officers to speak about shifting the capital out of quake-prone Tehran. Now the water disaster has made the risk really feel fast. And it’s not simply water and fault strains: Tehran’s poisonous smog, now a near-constant emergency that repeatedly shuts town down, might drive its personal slow-motion exodus. However regardless of the set off, evacuating Tehran or shifting the capital to a different area—similar to Makran on the Gulf of Oman—is a fantasy, not an answer.
As an alternative of chasing grand relocations, officers ought to confront the true drawback: many years of dangerous governance and reckless water administration that created this disaster within the first place.
Water shortage and a collapsing provide community have pushed Tehran to the sting. Land subsidence has weakened town’s constructions, leaving it brittle. A significant earthquake can be catastrophic—shattering infrastructure, inflicting mass casualties, and doubtlessly paralyzing the state’s administrative core in the intervening time when Iran would face a number of crises.
Gary Sick, a veteran Iran analyst who served on the U.S. Nationwide Safety Council underneath a number of presidents, as soon as warned {that a} main earthquake and drought putting Tehran collectively can be past a coup for the Islamic Republic, unleashing instability and chaos.
The ruling theocracy in Iran is a significant a part of the issue. For many years, water coverage has been hijacked by the Revolutionary Guards and a “water mafia” of related contractors, who revenue from dam development binges and interbasin groundwater transfers whereas sidelining science and blowing previous ecological limits.
Tehran’s mayors have prioritized improvement over logic—an strategy epitomized by former Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi (1990-98), who tremendously expanded a capital that merely doesn’t have the water, aquifers, breathable air, steady floor, or seismic security for countless development.
Fixing this mess would imply breaking these networks and imposing actual transparency and authorized caps—steps the regime is structurally unable to take, given its entrenched monetary pursuits and distorted, security-driven decision-making.
The thought of shifting the capital surfaced sometimes even earlier than the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but it surely by no means rose above scattered speak into an actual coverage debate. After the revolution, it has flared up at any time when Iran is rattled by an earthquake—and even after rumors of 1. Within the Nineteen Eighties, Armenian Iranian structural geologist Manuel Berberian was one of many first to show that the seismic risk to Tehran was fairly actual.
The findings of Berberian’s pioneering work for the Geological Survey of Iran on Tehran’s fault system and its historic seismicity have been stark: Giant components of town ought to by no means have been developed, and hundreds of thousands of Tehran’s residents have been in danger. Berberian’s analysis garnered preliminary reward, however authorities officers ignored its warnings as Tehran saved sprawling throughout a number of energetic fault strains.
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani grew to become president in 1989 and ushered in a interval of “reconstruction” after the devastating Iran-Iraq Struggle (1980-88). Beneath Rafsanjani, ostensibly extra technocratic bureaucrats got here to the fore. Amongst them was Karbaschi, a younger cleric in lay clothes who styled himself as a “trendy” supervisor.
In a 2001 interview with the writer Nik Kowsar, Karbaschi mentioned he had rejected the concept of abandoning the capital because it reminded him of Brazil shifting its capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília, which he referred to as an costly mistake. However somewhat than tackling badly wants reforms, Karbaschi doubled down on the issues, making an attempt to revitalize Tehran via large-scale development initiatives. Berberian and different specialists briefed Rafsanjani on the dangers, however Tehran’s enlargement continued underneath Rafsanjani and Karbaschi.
Berberian finally left Iran for the USA in 1990 after concluding that the Islamic Republic and Iranian tutorial establishments didn’t need a non-Muslim knowledgeable advising them or educating Muslim college students. His warnings went largely unheeded.
Within the Nineteen Eighties, Iran adopted a set of constructing rules—together with the nationwide Commonplace code on quake resistance—meant to make Tehran and different cities extra earthquake-resilient. However corruption via promoting density, which let builders purchase additional ground space ratio/peak underneath Karbaschi and the mayors who adopted, successfully circumvented these guidelines: Older buildings have been left unreinforced, and hundreds of recent ones went up with little actual capability to face up to a significant quake.
As an alternative of fixing Tehran’s underlying dangers, Karbaschi adopted the regime’s default technique of countless development. The size of town ballooned from 182 sq. miles in 1991 to 239 in 2000, largely underneath Karbaschi’s watch. Towers went up on unstable alluvial plains and over the seismic fault setback zones, areas the place buildings needs to be refrained from energetic faults; water use surged; and officers continued to construct dams, drill deep wells, and switch rivers, all of the whereas claiming that Tehran’s water provide would by no means run out.
Karbaschi later fell from grace and was briefly jailed, however the vertical, build-first mannequin he normalized outlived him. As aquifers have been tapped yr after yr, the bottom beneath Tehran compacted. Subsidence unfold, pipes cracked, leaks multiplied, and buildings started to pressure, generally in plain sight.
In accordance with Iranian specialists interviewed by the authors, Tehran can be at far decrease danger if the correct codes had been enforced and present constructions correctly retrofitted. As an alternative, allow revenues fueled high-rises on unstable soil and inside fault setback zones. At present, greater than 12,000 constructing parcels in Tehran sit on fault zones, together with about 1,000 high-rises over 12 tales.
No marvel the concept of shifting the capital retains arising. But it surely’s additionally a money cow for a well-known circle of contractors—together with the Revolutionary Guard’s Khatam al-Anbiya development headquarters, a significant participant within the water mafia.
Final yr, then-Inside Minister Ahmad Vahidi pegged the relocation price ticket at about $100 billion. That breaks down right into a procuring checklist of smaller, billable “requirements”: feasibility research, website choice, grasp plans, seismic and water surveys, new highways, rail hyperlinks, energy and water corridors, housing phases, and countless consultancies. Even with out an precise plan to maneuver, every sub-project has turn into a recent pretext for mega-contracts that circulate to Khatam and its associates, draining the state funds and routing cash via the Guard’s patronage and proxy networks. And since each “part” might be stretched out for years—even many years—the gravy prepare doesn’t want an finish level to maintain rolling.
Relocating greater than 14 million individuals from Tehran and its surrounding suburbs is a sensible nonstarter. The present water scarcity already strains the nation, and no different area has the capability in housing, jobs, providers, or water to soak up that many newcomers. One supply mentioned that in inner speak amongst lower-level managers, even a best-case evacuation would possibly shelter solely about 1 million individuals quickly, and even they’d be caught worrying that their houses and belongings can be looted whereas they have been gone.
However the resolution is to not evacuate Tehran or discover one other capital. There aren’t any different lifelike choices. For instance, Makran, not too long ago cited by the regime as a possible space for a brand new capital, is a brutal, scorching, dry, and underdeveloped area. As well as, seismologists warn that the Makran coast lies on a subduction zone able to producing a magnitude 8-plus earthquake and a devastating tsunami.
Saving Tehran from the present water scarcity begins with chopping demand, which might be completed by lowering consumption, increasing graywater reuse, and fixing leaky pipes. Past that, town wants a severe aquifer recharge. To restrict earthquake losses, Iranian leaders should cease development on or close to energetic faults and on gentle, quake-amplifying soils; strengthen older and unsafe buildings in addition to key methods similar to hospitals, bridges, and water strains; and construct an actual emergency plan—common drills, clear evacuation routes, and backup water and energy—so town can perform after a significant shock.
All of that is doable on paper; the issue is that the present energy construction makes doing it in actuality practically unimaginable.
For one, the regime is underneath monetary duress from largely self-inflicted sanctions. With out a actual shift in overseas coverage and a transparent retreat from its nuclear ambitions, Tehran will get neither Western financing nor severe personal funding.
This regime additionally has an extended report of corruption. Its choices are pushed by short-term pursuits and imposed from the highest down, with the general public’s welfare handled as an afterthought. Technical fixes received’t work with out political change. The system that precipitated the disaster can’t be trusted to unravel it.
