The Washington Post, in a report about Iran’s water shortage crisis, wrote:
Iran is best known as an exporter of terror and mayhem around the Middle East, but its leaders also provide a great example of how not to run an economy. Consider the country’s decades-long dalliance with industrial policy.
The paper wrote on Tuesday, December 2, that trade restrictions and insistence on self-sufficiency have prevented Tehran from compensating for low agricultural output through imports. If international trade made countries worse and industrial policy made them better, Iran should by now have been a wealthy nation.
The Washington Post, referring to decades of industrial policy in Iran, wrote about the regime’s emphasis on “self-sufficiency” and “producing all food domestically,” noting that the problem is that water is the foundation of agriculture—and Iran is running out of it.
The paper wrote that Iran, with a population of 90 million, has a predominantly dry climate and lacks significant comparative advantage in large-scale agriculture. The government has attempted to create such an advantage by subsidizing fertilizer, promising to buy crops, and offering farmers favorable loans.
The Washington Post noted that after the February 1979 revolution, the amount of irrigated land nearly doubled, adding that these policies created millions of agricultural jobs and led farms to produce crops they could not have produced without government support.
However, critics of central planning had long predicted that these policies would eventually result in water shortages.
In this regard, the state-run Mehr News Agency wrote on November 29 that due to last year’s drought, wheat production had fallen by more than 30%.
The current water crisis in Iran is not merely the result of drought but the consequence of decades of mismanagement and failed policies. Officials of Iran’s regime ignored expert warnings for years, delayed urgent reforms needed for sustainability, and are now disrupting the lives of millions through policies such as water rationing.
These policies belong to a regime that has sacrificed Iran’s natural resources and ecosystems for its political interests—and now the people of Iran are paying the price.
In part of its report, the Washington Post drew parallels between the ideological governments of Iran’s regime and the former Soviet Union, and the inefficiency they imposed on agriculture. It wrote that in a market economy, farmers, faced with water scarcity, would adopt more efficient irrigation methods or cultivate different crops.
The Washington Post added that free trade would allow farmers to offset production shortages by purchasing goods from other countries better suited for growing them. But in Iran’s regime and the former Soviet Union, agriculture had to continue regardless of circumstances, with politicians claiming it was necessary for national security.
According to the paper, the result was predictable. Today in Iran, water levels behind dams near Tehran are dangerously low, and water is being rationed.
Meanwhile, the capital is not the only place facing shortages and rationing. Some regime officials have spoken of the possibility of water rationing in Mashhad and Isfahan as well.
The Washington Post also referred to remarks by Massoud Pezeshkian, the president of Iran’s regime, who had spoken about relocating the nation’s capital.
The paper noted that supporters of industrial policy often cite a few seemingly successful examples—mostly in East Asia—when arguing for greater government intervention in economic direction but emphasized that these cases are exceptions.
To demonstrate this, the Washington Post pointed to various sectors in Japan and China where industrial policies either fail or succeed only at enormous cost—costs that outweigh the benefits.
