Air air pollution is the most recent environmental disaster inflicting havoc throughout Iran. Massive elements of the nation are already affected by a drought, one of many worst in many years. Its wetlands are dry, and its land is subsiding at alarming charges.
Now the fallout can be affecting the air that the nation’s extra than 85 million individuals breathe. As lakes, wetlands, and riverbeds dry out, their uncovered surfaces flip into main sources of mud. Sturdy winds can carry this mud and transport it throughout cities and even distant areas.
The extraordinarily dry circumstances have worsened Iran’s already excessive ranges of air air pollution. In current weeks, the capital Tehran was ranked because the most polluted metropolis on the planet, in keeping with international air high quality displays. In November, its air high quality index hit 200 – a degree categorized as “very unhealthy”.
The horrible air high quality has pressured authorities to shut faculties, universities and workplaces to scale back publicity. Hospitals are reporting rising numbers of circumstances of respiratory and cardiac problems throughout the nation.
Native media have reported greater than 350 deaths inside ten days linked to worsening air high quality in current weeks. Demand for emergency providers within the capital has additionally elevated by greater than 30% throughout November 2025, in keeping with native statistics.
Different main Iranian cities, together with Tabriz, Mashhad and Isfahan, have recorded readings above 150 in the previous few weeks. These ranges are thought-about harmful for all age teams. In Ahvaz and Zabol, air air pollution from sand and mud storms has blanketed the southern cities, placing lives and livelihoods in danger.
Research point out greater than 59,000 Iranians die prematurely yearly from air pollution-related sicknesses.
In addition to mud rising from dried out lakes and wetlands, ageing automobiles and low-quality gasoline in Iran’s main cities are contributing to the air air pollution.
However specializing in these causes misses the larger image.
Iran’s air-pollution emergency is brought on by the identical governance failures which have destabilised the nation’s water methods, emptied its aquifers, dried out its wetlands, and accelerated land subsidence.
Simply as Iran’s water disaster is just not merely the results of drought, Iran’s polluted air is just not merely the product of visitors.
Learn extra:
Iran’s capital faces unprecedented water shortages and even attainable evacuation. What adjustments may assist?
In most main cities, a key burden comes from pollution (corresponding to nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and high-quality particulates produced by burning low-quality gasoline) in addition to outdated engines, and heavy industrial fuels corresponding to mazut.
These poisonous emissions accumulate in cities and immediately contribute to respiratory illness, and cardiovascular sickness. Current international satellite tv for pc analyses, that are presently being reviewed by the journal Nature Cities, counsel that almost all mega cities (inhabitants greater than 10 million) with vital ranges of nitrogen dioxide air pollution within the decrease environment (the layer of air we breath) have minimize air pollution ranges in recent times.
Nonetheless, Tehran is among the many few giant cities worldwide the place these concentrations have elevated between 2019 and 2024.
However combustion engines in previous automobiles are solely half the story. In lots of areas, a considerable share of PM₁₀ and PM₂.₅ (particles smaller than 10 micrometers and a couple of.5 micrometers which penetrate the lungs and bloodstream) now originates from mud and salt storms generated by shrinking lakes, rivers and wetlands. These particles can journey a whole lot and even 1000’s of kilometres inside hours, affecting cities far past their factors of origin.
Our analysis, on Lake Urmia – as soon as the Center East’s largest saltwater lake – exhibits this clearly: because the lake mattress dried, salt-laden mud plumes had been able to travelling a whole lot of kilometres and even crossing nationwide borders in lower than 12 hours. This can be a vivid illustration of how tightly Iran’s water disaster is intertwined with its air-pollution disaster.
Key causes of Iran’s air air pollution
Iran’s air-pollution downside isn’t just a transport downside, a technological shortfall or a meteorological misfortune. It’s basically the predictable end result of many years of presidency priorities, distorted incentives, and institutional inertia.
First, Iran’s authorities priorities have formed a overseas coverage that in the end led to worldwide sanctions and deepened the nation’s financial and worldwide isolation.
This isolation has had direct environmental penalties. It restricts entry to fashionable air‑high quality monitoring methods, industrial filtration applied sciences, and low‑emission engines, whereas deterring the overseas funding wanted to improve transport and trade.
In consequence, whereas different international locations have decreased NO₂ and particulate air pollution by cleaner applied sciences and tighter requirements, Iran’s choices stay severely restricted by the political decisions that produced its isolation.
Second, Iran’s extraordinarily low gasoline costs, sustained by immense subsidies, have made the nationwide economic system depending on low cost power, a key driver of the nation’s inefficient electrical energy era and extreme consumption. Automobiles with gasoline inefficiencies unimaginable elsewhere stay commercially viable.
This isn’t an unintended coverage end result. It’s a part of a broader financial cycle wherein subsidised gasoline sustains outdated home automotive manufacturing and high-emitting industries, a few of that are tied to highly effective establishments whose monetary pursuits depend upon sustaining the established order.
Nitrogen oxide ranges in Iran (tonnes):
World Financial institution knowledge, CC BY
Resetting nationwide priorities
Many international locations have minimize city air pollution by stricter emissions requirements, cleaner transport, and built-in metropolis planning, however Iran can’t do that with out addressing the structural forces driving its emissions.
Reversing Iran’s air-quality disaster requires a elementary shift in authorities priorities, putting environmental safety and public well being on the centre of policymaking. Iran’s problem is just not technical capability however distorted incentives and nationwide priorities. Solely by decreasing worldwide isolation, strengthening transparency, and dismantling subsidy-driven distortions can Iran unlock the applied sciences and funding wanted to scrub its air.
As soon as these structural limitations are addressed, actual progress turns into attainable. This would come with steadily altering gasoline costs to curb high-emission automobiles, restoring entry to international expertise and finance to modernise the car fleet and public transport, and reviving wetlands, lakes, and soils by water-governance reform to chop mud air pollution.
Complementing these measures with superior satellite tv for pc monitoring, AI-based evaluation, air monitoring stations, and higher city planing.
The air is just not polluted as a result of Iranians drive an excessive amount of – it’s polluted as a result of the system that shapes the nation’s priorities and decisions is damaged.
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