Is Iran's water crisis fueled by military-backed illegal wells?

6 PaulHoule 3 8/13/2025, 2:27:00 PM globalvoices.org ↗

Comments (3)

bell-cot · 1h ago
Plausibly "yes" - but if so, it should be obvious from satellite imagery. The article makes no mention of such.

(Context: Iran's IRGC could reasonably be viewed as a secretive government-controlled corporation, which dominates major parts of the economy.)

PaulHoule · 1h ago
Wells are pretty small, pipelines are buried and not easy to see from the sky -- attempts to measure groundwater use detect the evaporation

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-groundwater-accurately-satelli...

or detect subsidence

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022WR03...

bell-cot · 30m ago
I was mostly thinking of large fields of water-hungry crops, growing in areas where climate would otherwise make that impossible.