Historic Drought Persists in Tigris-Euphrates Basin Amid Geopolitical Water Tensions

The Tigris and Euphrates river system is currently experiencing water levels at historic lows across 2025, intensifying a severe humanitarian and political crisis that affects Syria, Iraq, and Iran. This prolonged aridity is exacerbated by human-induced climate change, which has increased the frequency and severity of multi-year drought events in the region.

The area encompassing the Fertile Crescent and Iran has endured exceptionally low rainfall and elevated temperatures since the boreal winter of 2020/2021, leading to an agricultural drought classified as 'extreme' to 'exceptional' based on the Standardised Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). For Iraq, 2025 represents the driest year recorded since 1933, underscoring the gravity of the current water emergency. Water inflows into the Tigris and Euphrates basins have diminished by as much as 27 percent below the long-term average compared to the previous year.

Iraqi authorities report receiving less than 35 percent of their historical water share, a deficit largely attributed to upstream damming projects in neighboring Turkey and Iran. Consequently, national reservoirs are critically low, with stored water amounting to only 8 percent of total storage capacity, a 57 percent decrease from the prior year. This situation has direct political and economic consequences; in Iraq, the crisis forced the government to suspend wheat planting as of September 2025 due to insufficient resources, threatening food security. The southern city of Basra, home to 3.5 million residents, is particularly vulnerable, with a growing reliance on trucked water supplies and documented saltwater intrusion affecting local marine species.

Syria is also facing devastating impacts, with rainfall reportedly falling by nearly 70 percent, crippling an estimated 75 percent of the country's rain-fed farmland and leading to a projected wheat shortfall of 2.73 million tonnes. The World Weather Attribution group has previously noted that the likelihood of such a drought in the basin has increased by a factor of 25 due to 1.3°C of warming from human-induced climate change. In Iran, the capital, Tehran, faces the risk of emergency rationing if precipitation does not arrive by December 2025, as agriculture consumes over 90 percent of the nation's water.

Diplomatic efforts have seen some temporary adjustments. Turkey, following a meeting with Iraqi officials on July 1, 2025, released an increased flow of 420 cubic meters per second into the Tigris, though reports indicate this relief was short-lived, with flows soon returning below the annual average. Iraq depends on Turkey and Iran for nearly 75 percent of its freshwater, highlighting the geopolitical sensitivity of water management agreements. The long-term stability of the region's water security hinges on robust, binding diplomatic accords, as internal neglect and upstream restrictions continue to strain the lifelines of millions across the basin.