Tehran began water rationing too late, officials admit as crisis deepens

The event, titled “You Will Kneel Before Iranians Again,” was attended by government officials and supporters, many of whom appeared in diverse styles of dress, including without the mandatory Islamic head covering.

Images shared on social media showed no sign of the strict dress enforcement typically seen in public spaces.

The relaxed atmosphere contrasted sharply with the intensified street enforcement of hijab laws. In recent weeks, authorities have resumed arrests, public warnings, and the closure of businesses such as cafes and restaurants for noncompliance with compulsory dress codes.

In previous years, the government has relaxed hijab enforcement at certain high-profile state events – such as Guards Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani’s funeral or major state-organized marches – to project a more moderate image while maintaining repressive controls in daily life.

Contradictions in official behavior

Two days before the ceremony, Asadollah Jafari, the judiciary chief of Isfahan province, called unveiling “a disruptive act” and urged judicial officers to intervene.

“Some individuals, by engaging in and openly displaying norm-breaking behavior, offend public decency. Since these individuals commit an act that violates the law, their actions constitute an evident crime, and judicial officers must carry out their legal duty,” he said.

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Hossein Shariatmadari, the Supreme Leader’s representative and editor-in-chief of Kayhan newspaper, has been one of the most outspoken voices against easing hijab enforcement.

In an editorial on November 1, he wrote that the spread of unveiled women had reached “a worrying level” and described the trend as “a home-wrecking and decency-destroying phenomenon.”

“What is deeply concerning is that some who speak about confronting semi-nudity make no mention of banning unveiling – as if unveiling itself has ceased to be forbidden by religion, law, or humanity, and one must only be careful that it does not turn into full nudity.”

Meanwhile, numerous reports have emerged of business closures over hijab violations in recent weeks, with police insisting that all public venues must enforce dress codes or face shutdown.

The sight of unveiled women at a government celebration in Tehran, while morality patrols reappear across the country, has highlighted the Islamic Republic’s double standard – using selective leniency in public displays even as everyday enforcement grows harsher.

The report appeared first on university channels and student groups, claiming that Iran's flagship institution of higher education had lifted the YouTube ban on its internal network, allowing direct access for "educational and research purposes."

Iran's communications regulator denied any formal directive or even plans for such move. But critics were unconvinced, not least because of Tehran's long record of quiet, selective exemptions.

Many activists, technologists and legal experts pointed out that the idea of selective access reinforces inequality by creating digital privilege for a small, already advantaged group.

Prominent jurist Mohsen Borhani described the concept as “a combination of internet apartheid and a control system.”

“Such class-based privileges gradually serve to justify the actions of anti-freedom controllers and their so-called councils,” he wrote on X.

Meshkat Asadi, CEO of the New Businesses Group, echoed the concern: “Allocating a higher level of access while the rest of society does not have it constitutes a form of class-based internet.”

Obstacles to digital freedom

For nearly two decades, initiatives such as “emergency internet for businesses” and “journalists’ internet,” along with unrestricted SIM cards for foreign tourists, have entrenched a divide in access based on occupation or status.

Such decisions are made by Iran’s Supreme Cyber-Space Council (SCC), formally chaired by President Masoud Pezeshkian but dominated by appointees of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and conservative bodies including the Revolutionary Guards and the Organization for Islamic Propagation.

This entrenched structure is widely seen as the key obstacle to any meaningful policy shift.

Abdolhossein Firouzabadi, the council’s former secretary said last week that at least ten members strongly oppose lifting major filters.

“The council’s composition should be reconsidered if we want to see real change in the country’s digital landscape,” he told moderate news-site Entekhab.

‘Fragmenting the nation’

Advocates of free access argue that those benefiting from such a system become complicit in the injustice imposed on the wider population.

“The authorities are fragmenting the nation into smaller and weaker groups in order to resist the collective will of the people,” Saeed Soozangar told tech outlet Zoomit.

Cybersecurity expert Vahid Farid told Zoomit that authorities appear to be considering limited openings to reduce the “growing damages caused by filtering,” even as they avoid a full reversal of the nationwide ban.

‘The right to learn’

Many also stress YouTube’s everyday educational value far beyond campuses.

“Someone may not have the opportunity to attend university, but they can learn through YouTube,” Pouya Pirhosseinlou of the Iranian E-Commerce Association pointed out on X. “When access to this resource is blocked, it effectively says: ‘You do not have the right to learn.’”

Legal advocacy group Dadban added that restricting online access endangers rights ranging from education to healthcare, employment, and a dignified life.

Internet-freedom collective Filterban asked: “If YouTube is safe and useful, why is it only good for a few universities? If it’s dangerous, why is it harmless for students but dangerous for ordinary people?

“ This isn’t reforming the filtering system,” the advocacy group said on X, “it’s the reproduction of discrimination in the digital age.”

Residents say water has been shut off from midnight until around 5 a.m. in recent nights.

“Despite repeated denials by officials, it appears the process of rationing has started” and citizens in parts of the capital “are deprived of water during the night,” Mizan News Agency, affiliated with the judiciary, wrote.

The daily Haft-e Sobh likewise reported sudden five-to-six-hour overnight cuts in drinking water across several districts, all without prior notice.

Reduced pressure across the city, the paper said, and declining surface and groundwater reserves had led to “serious instability” in Tehran’s water network.

The outages have lasted long enough to affect even households with backup storage tanks, according to the report.

Rising frustration

Haft-e Sobh quoted residents as saying the sudden shutdowns disrupted daily life. “When the water is cut off at night, we don’t know when it will return, so we can’t plan our use. Even tanks empty quickly,” one resident said.

President Masoud Pezeshkian warned on November 6 that if rain does not arrive by December, water will have to be rationed across Tehran, adding that prolonged drought could even force evacuation of the city.

The head of Tehran’s provincial water company recently described the capital’s situation as “red and concerning.”

Health and cost concerns

Unannounced rationing, Haft-e Sobh warned, could hinder hygiene and household routines dependent on steady water access. Unreliable supply may increase health risks in residential buildings and impose higher costs on families forced to rely on water tanks or delivery services, it added.

Meteorological data show 20 provinces have gone more than six weeks without measurable rainfall.

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No precipitation has fallen in Tehran since the start of autumn, Mohammadreza Kavianpour, head of Iran’s Water Research Institute, said on Thursday warning that forecasts show the drought is likely to persist through the season.

“The risk of water scarcity in the capital must be taken very seriously,” Kavianpour said.

Tehran’s supply depends heavily on the Karaj Dam, whose remaining reserves are sufficient for only two weeks of drinking water.

Environmental experts say years of over-extraction, unscientific dam-building and poor management have pushed the country toward what some describe as “water bankruptcy.”

The proposal, reported Thursday by the IRGC-linked daily Javan, would put Mayor Alireza Zakani in charge of supplying essential goods to households in the capital.

Zakani claims the plan, approved by President Masoud Pezeshkian, could reduce prices by up to 40 percent. Residents quoted by Javan said municipal-run markets already sell cheaper goods than elsewhere in the city.

But even at face value, the initiative seems to be yet another reactive measure in a system afflicted by deep structural problems. The question is less whether this plan can work and more why such plans keep reappearing.

Moderate outlet Fararu this week laid out the structural flaws driving Iran’s crisis: contradictory decision-making by overlapping institutions, a budget tied to unstable oil revenues, and an absence of dependable data that leaves officials governing by instinct rather than information.

Economic policy, the outlet said, is shaped by ministries, the Central Bank, the Planning and Budget Organization, and an array of parallel bodies that often work at cross-purposes.

“Most economic decisions in Iran are made overnight,” it wrote, warning that real change requires slow, coordinated reform across government—something the Islamic Republic has resisted for decades.

‘Bipolar economy’

The centrist daily Sazandegi pointed to another symptom of this dysfunction: chaotic decision-making that thrives in the grey zones created by sanctions.

The paper highlighted the clash between hardline MP Amir Hossein Sabeti and Babak Zanjani—the ‘sanctions-fixer’ once sentenced to death but pardoned and now tapped again to recover Iran’s oil revenues.

“Iran’s economy exists in a bipolar state,” Sazandegi wrote, “caught between a revolutionary pursuit of social justice that resists globalization and a rentier capitalism that thrives on sanctions.”

The public spat between two privileged insiders, Sazandegi argued, is evidence of an economy pulled between ideological theatrics and rent-seeking networks—a system that’s neither competitive nor transparent.

Bleak outlook

Despite their scathing critiques, both outlets chose to not mention the elephant in the room—as is almost always the case in Iran: a foreign policy that has produced decades of isolation and tightening sanctions.

With the return of UN sanctions in late September—and Tehran’s continued combative stance—the situation is likely to deteriorate further before any improvement is possible.

Seen through that lens, Zakani’s food-distribution proposal is less a solution than another reflex: an attempt to patch symptoms without addressing the machinery underneath.

After a series of military and diplomatic setbacks, Tehran may hope their allies next door can preserve its influence via the ballotbox and protect a decades-old Iranian political investment in its neighbor.

Confident that US attacks "obliterated" Iranian nuclear sites in June amidst an Israeli military campaign, US President Donald Trump may be ignoring the potential threat Iran poses in Iraq according to historian Dr Shahram Kholdi.

“Iraq may become, in a very odd way, the Achilles heel of the Trump administration,” he told Eye for Iran.

Kholdi warned Tehran’s reconfigured influence could quietly undermine US gains against Iran in the region, adding that steering its militias into politics risks “recreating the Islamic Republic light version in Iraq, 2.0, that operates through bureaucracy rather than arms.”

The shift comes as Washington issues one of its strongest warnings yet, saying it will not recognize Iraq’s next government if any ministries are handed to armed factions linked to the Islamic Republic, a source in Iraq’s Kurdistan region told Iran International on Friday.

In a recent call with Iraq’s defense minister reported by Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth cautioned any interference by armed factions to unspecified future US military operations would provoke a sharp American response.

The minister, according to the report, described it as “a final notice,” reflecting US concern that Iran’s allies could use Iraq’s elections to entrench themselves in state institutions.

For Tehran, encouraging its proxies to enter politics provides a way to adapt without relinquishing its arms.

The Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella of Shi'ite militias funded through Iraq’s state budget, command vast patronage networks that already blur the line between governance and coercion. Bringing those networks formally into Iraq’s political system could allow Iran to project stability while maintaining influence behind the scenes.

“Iran has been severely weakened in the wake of the 12-day war,” said Jay Solomon, a journalist and author of The Iran Wars.

“What we see is an effort to maintain their proxies and stay below the radar but rebuild.” The approach, described by Solomon, reflects a shift from confrontation to consolidation, using political channels to preserve influence while avoiding direct conflict with the United States.

That calculation, according to Alex Vatanka, Director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, shows how Iran’s leadership has learned to work within new limits.

“They want to rebuild as much as they can within limits. They probably have a much better sense of their limitations today than they did before this summer. But again, they do not want to have that open fight, certainly not on Iraqi soil.”

Two decades after the US invasion of Iraq, Washington faces a familiar dilemma: whether to tolerate a fragile partner shaped by Tehran’s influence or confront a more sophisticated phase of Iranian power consolidation.

Iran’s recalibration in Iraq, analysts on Eye for Iran said, is less a retreat than a pause for recovery, a reminder that even under pressure its power lies not in confrontation but in adaptation.

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