Iran Launches Major Oman Sea–to–Central Plateau Water Transfer Project
Iran has inaugurated a large-scale water transfer project that carries desalinated water from the Sea of Oman to the country’s central plateau.
Iran has inaugurated a large-scale water transfer project that carries desalinated water from the Sea of Oman to the country’s central plateau, marking one of the most ambitious infrastructure undertakings in recent years. The initiative, which became operational on December 6 by order of President Masoud Pezeshkian, transports water that is desalinated at the source and pumped through an 800-kilometer pipeline from Sirjan to Isfahan, with the primary aim of providing stable water supplies for Isfahan’s industrial sector, especially Mobarakeh Steel Company, one of the largest industrial complexes in Iran. The project was completed in just two years at a cost of 35 trillion tomans, with Mobarakeh Steel acting as the principal investor alongside financial support from the government.
Although the project is now being launched under President Pezeshkian, its origins trace back to the administration of Hassan Rouhani, continued under Ebrahim Raisi, and only now reached operational status. During the inauguration ceremony, executives of Mobarakeh Steel argued that their company used less than 1.5 percent of all Zayandeh-Rud water, highlighting this figure to counter public perceptions that the industry is a primary driver of the river basin’s depletion. Despite their claims of a small formal share, the company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to secure water from hundreds of kilometers away, a decision that officials frame as essential for securing industrial continuity and reducing dependence on the over-stressed Zayandeh-Rud basin.
However, the project has generated considerable criticism from water experts and environmental specialists. Many argue that decisions about where water moves and how it is allocated are not grounded in principles of sustainable development, but in the economic interests of influential industries and contractors. Somayeh Rafiei, a member of parliament from Tehran, criticized Iran’s water governance structure, stating that “the number of true water strategists in Iran is fewer than the fingers on one hand, and these individuals never change,” pointing to a closed decision-making circle that resists accountability or reform. Others contend that Iran continues to prioritize supply-side megaprojects instead of confronting the root causes of its water crisis, including over-extraction of aquifers, inefficient water pricing, and the lack of serious restrictions on consumption.
A significant portion of the criticism focuses on Iran’s long-standing pattern of misaligned water planning. Zahra Saeedi, a representative from Mobarakeh, described the logic behind such transfers as fundamentally flawed: “We take water from a place that needs it, transfer it far away, and then return to the original region because it again lacks water. What kind of water management is this?” Her remarks reflect widespread frustration with a system in which water shortages are repeatedly addressed by physically moving water, rather than by reducing consumption in regions that have exceeded their ecological capacity. This imbalance is most visible in agriculture, which consumes nearly 90 percent of Iran’s total water, often through inefficient irrigation and high-waste crop patterns. Yet instead of cutting agricultural demand, officials have increasingly turned toward grand desalination-and-transfer schemes from the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, with planned projects extending to Isfahan, Kerman, Yazd, and Mashhad.
Iran’s turn to desalinated water echoes trends seen in Gulf countries, which rely on similar technologies but devote vast sums of oil revenue to power their desalination plants. These operations come with significant environmental costs, especially highly saline brine discharges that damage marine ecosystems. While Iran’s volume of desalinated water remains small compared to the southern Gulf states, the environmental, financial, and energy burdens remain substantial, raising questions about long-term sustainability.
In practice, the new Oman Sea–to–Isfahan pipeline represents a significant engineering accomplishment, demonstrating Iran’s capacity to complete large infrastructure despite sanctions and economic challenges. It may help reduce pressure on the Zayandeh-Rud basin and stabilize industrial production in Isfahan. Yet experts warn that the project does not resolve the deeper structural problems driving Iran’s water crisis. Without major reforms in agricultural consumption, groundwater governance, and demand management, the country risks trading a water-scarcity crisis for an energy, cost, and environmental crisis. The new pipeline, therefore, stands as both a technological milestone and a test of whether Iran is prepared to move beyond short-term solutions toward a more sustainable and equitable model of water management.