By Jason Collins
Editor’s note: The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. View more opinions on ScoonTV
Iran’s latest wave of unrest is often described as another episode in a familiar cycle: protests erupt, the state responds with force, and order is eventually restored. But the persistence and breadth of the current demonstrations suggest something more consequential is unfolding. What distinguishes this moment is not ideology or factional politics, but the convergence of material failures that directly undermine daily life. Water scarcity and currency collapse are no longer background conditions. Together, they are reshaping the relationship between state and society.
Protests that began in late December have continued into a fourth week despite mass arrests and sweeping internet blackouts. Iranian authorities have framed the unrest as the work of “rioters” and “terrorists,” yet the grievances driving people into the streets are notably concrete. Access to drinking water is becoming uncertain in major cities. The national currency has lost much of its value. Food and basic goods are increasingly unaffordable. When the essentials of life are in question, repression loses some of its deterrent power.
Water and currency crises rarely remain technical matters. They are stress tests of governance, exposing whether institutions can plan, adapt, and distribute hardship in a way the public considers legitimate. In Iran’s case, both systems are failing simultaneously, revealing structural weaknesses that have accumulated over decades.
Day Zero and the Limits of State Capacity
Iran is approaching what water planners describe as “Day Zero”: the point at which municipal systems can no longer reliably deliver drinking water. This is not a hypothetical scenario. One major dam has already run dry, and others are operating at single-digit capacity. In Tehran alone, between 10 and 15 million residents depend on an increasingly fragile water infrastructure.
Iran’s geography has always posed challenges. The country is largely arid, rainfall is uneven, and drought cycles are common. Yet the current crisis cannot be explained by climate conditions alone. Reduced rainfall has accelerated scarcity, but the deeper causes lie in decades of policy decisions that prioritized short-term economic and political objectives over long-term sustainability.
Successive governments invested heavily in dam construction and large-scale water diversion projects, often without adequate environmental assessment. Water-intensive agriculture was encouraged even in regions poorly suited to it. Groundwater extraction proceeded with minimal regulation, leading to widespread aquifer depletion. Over time, these choices hollowed out the system’s resilience.
Even when rain does fall, it increasingly fails to replenish reserves. Degraded soil struggles to absorb water, turning precipitation into runoff and floods rather than allowing for recovery. Night-time pressure cuts have become routine, and officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, have openly warned of potential restrictions or even evacuations from major urban centers if conditions deteriorate further.
Lake Urmia stands as a stark symbol of this trajectory. Once the second-largest saltwater lake in the world, it has lost more than 95 percent of its volume due to unrestrained damming and river diversion. The consequences extend beyond the lake itself. As exposed lakebed dries, the risk of salt storms grows, threatening agriculture, public health, and regional stability. What was once an environmental issue has become a social and political one.
As with most forms of scarcity, the burden falls unevenly. Wealthier Iranians can often secure bottled water or private solutions, at least temporarily. Poorer communities cannot. In this way, water scarcity deepens existing inequalities and transforms environmental stress into a source of social anger.
Currency Collapse and the Politics of Daily Survival
Economic deterioration has compounded these environmental pressures. In December, shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar shuttered their stores in protest as the national currency reached a new low. The symbolism was unmistakable. Historically, the bazaar has served as both an economic backbone and a political barometer. Its closure signaled not merely dissatisfaction with policy, but a broader loss of confidence.
Since mid-2025, Iran’s currency has lost roughly 60 percent of its value. The causes are cumulative rather than sudden: long-standing sanctions, shortages of hard currency, diplomatic isolation, and the systematic sidelining of economic expertise in favor of ideological or security considerations. The result has been a rapid erosion of purchasing power.
As economist Hassan Hakimian has observed, chronic corruption and mismanagement were already straining the economy before sanctions intensified their effects. For ordinary Iranians, the distinction matters little. What they experience is the steady narrowing of what wages can buy. Food inflation has surged, and FAO data point to declining consumption of protein and dairy, indicating that currency collapse is translating directly into nutritional stress.
Unlike abstract macroeconomic indicators, these changes are felt immediately and personally. They shape decisions about meals, healthcare, and whether to remain in a city where water and income are both increasingly unreliable. Economic collapse, in this sense, acts as a multiplier for other forms of discontent.
Iran’s external relationships offer limited relief. While China and Russia maintain transactional ties, purchasing oil or exchanging military cooperation, neither has committed to stabilizing Iran’s economy or addressing its structural vulnerabilities. These relationships provide short-term lifelines without altering the underlying dynamics of decline.
Why Crisis Becomes Structural
Together, water scarcity and currency collapse illuminate a deeper pattern. Material hardship lowers tolerance for political repression, not because people become ideologically opposed to the state, but because survival itself becomes uncertain. These crises do not spark unrest on their own; they expose longstanding institutional failures that prevent effective response.
Iran’s political system has proven adept at enforcing control, but far less capable of integrating expertise or public participation into policymaking. Technical solutions are often available, yet they collide with entrenched interests. The case of Kaveh Madani, a water management expert forced into exile after proposing reforms that threatened powerful stakeholders, is emblematic. Expertise that challenges patronage networks or security priorities is sidelined, ensuring that problems persist even when remedies exist.
This dynamic transforms episodic shocks into chronic conditions. Water shortages recur because governance structures resist reform. Economic crises deepen because decision-making remains insulated from accountability. Over time, legitimacy erodes not through a single failure, but through the accumulation of unresolved ones.
Sustained Pressure, Not a Passing Moment
The current protests reflect this accumulation. Participation has broadened beyond traditional activist groups to include workers, shopkeepers, and professionals, as well as expressions of solidarity from Iranian communities abroad. This breadth suggests that unrest is no longer confined to discrete grievances or moments of outrage. It is rooted in a sustained decline in living standards and confidence in the state’s ability to manage basic functions.
The government’s response has followed a familiar pattern: security crackdowns, mass arrests, and communication blackouts. These measures may temporarily suppress unrest, but they do little to resolve the forces driving it. Water scarcity and economic instability are not problems that can be policed away.
Iran’s predicament does not point inevitably toward immediate regime collapse. But it does indicate a narrowing margin for stability. As environmental degradation and economic dysfunction reinforce one another, the cost of inaction rises, and the effectiveness of repression diminishes. What is emerging is not a single crisis, but a condition of recurring instability, one in which governance failures, rather than organized opposition, increasingly define the cycle of protest.
Curtis Scoon is the founder of ScoonTv.com Download the ScoonTv App to join our weekly livestream every Tuesday @ 8pm EST! Support true independent media. Become a VIP member www.scoontv.com/vip-signup/ and download the ScoonTv App from your App Store.
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