Governments have finite amounts of money. Both of these things (water infrastructure and fighting proxy wars) are capital intensive projects. Its reasonable to conclude less money spent on one would allow more money spent on another.

Even without that factor, Attention does matter. Governments can do multiple things, but in more dictatorial regimes, doing things well often require prioritization at the top, and there is a limited number of things the top can prioritize. Its one of the main failings of dictatorships in general: the top is afraid to appoint too competent middle management lest they rise up, so everything becomes very top down managed.

Additionally some of the issues causing this seem to be related to corruption in their military, like diverting water in unsustainable ways to support farming projects that have ties to people well connected to irgc. (To be fair, i dont know how true that is, i dont have a good source for that)

Its been 46 years, there have been opportunities for peace along the way if they wanted it. It would have required compromises though.

Iran's not war not peace policy is an expensive one, both directly and indirectly (e.g. turning them into a parriah state). In the end it seems like its also been largely ineffective. Instead of keeping them out of war, proxies like Hamas ended up drawing them into one, and it ended up being a pretty one sided war not in their favour. Although i suppose prior to that point it was yielding geopolitical gains.

You are never a friend of the Western countries [==the US] when you are an oil producer. You are their vassal or their foe. #oilCurse

And if my ancient ancestor did not kill that fly we will be travelling to stars now. And why ffs one country should obey the other?

So what you’re saying is if they stayed quiet and supplicant to the British while they drained their oil resources while the extreme elites made all the money, everything would be okay? The Islamic revolution was a populist revolution, supported by the vast majority of the country because their lives were shit.

How do you prevent a hurricane? The failures of responding to the disaster were all at the state/local level.

"economic attack by sanction, cyber attack on energy infrastructure, and lately even kinetic attack from neighbors."

They could just stop being at war with Israel any time, it is a pointless choice.

Iran isn’t a breadbasket exactly, but it has more arable land per person than Germany, Italy, the UK, or Ireland. And vastly more than Japan. It’s relatively temperate now—future warming doesn’t explain its current situation. On top of all that, it has oil! In 1980, just after the revolution, Iran had a PPP GDP per capita above Taiwan, China, and South Korea. And only modestly behind Poland. Today those countries are far ahead. Same for Thailand, Malaysia, and Turkey.

The economic sanctions are a symptom not the cause.

I completely agree with you. We who wish well on Iranians can only hope the situation is speedily rectified and the regime will finally fall, ending the oppression, want, war and poverty they have inflicted on so many millions of people both within and without their borders.

In the meantime i hope it rains.

Almost everything you’ve described, except for natural disasters, is an own goal. There’s literally no need for the country to be poor and on the brink of collapse. They are doing it to themselves.

The situation the article is about seems more to do with corruption and mismanagement than sanctions.

Theocracy surely isn't helping

I suspect that the IRGC will be the last ones with empty canteens.

It's all British/American fault. /s

You got down voted for this, but it gave me a chuckle. Some people have no sense of humour.

Maybe Tehran just needs to tax the locals an additional 2% so they can finally start delivering…

Never under estimate China. AP News says China expected 270M cross region trips during the Chinese new year this year. Likely with millions out of Beijing alone by itself for this yearly event over 2 weeks.

That's also half way across the world to a country that is not exactly on friendly terms with Iran (not as unfriendly as say usa is, but still not geopolitical friends)

I'm ignorant but aren't oil pipelines much longer? They don't need to traverse mountain ranges but still. Either way i can't imagine such a project would be possible in an emergency time scale without the combined assistance of the US, Israel (desalination experts) and China. i know absolutely nothing about these things, so i don't know if it's even theoretically possible with their help.

I had no idea Romanization of Perian was a thing. Thanks for sharing!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Persian