Rain prayers have been held across Iran amid a historically unprecedented dry spell which keeps threatening crops and livestock.
People in many cities in the eastern, southeastern and central parts of Iran have attended rain prayers over the past weeks to wish a break to the scorching drought.
The collective prayer is a religious ritual recommended for winters of depleted rainfall, a major case in Iran this year. Those attending the prayer repent the sins that they believe might have caused the drought.
Images and videos showed dairy farmers and peasants raising their arms in despair during the prayers, begging for water that could quench the thirst of the livestock they were carrying in their arms.
The water shortage has been acute in Iran over the past years. Even the relatively wet parts of the country in the west and the north have seen historically low levels of rainfall this year. Authorities said the province of Tehran, which includes the capital, experienced the longest dry spell of autumn this year, from September through December.
“We recorded 15.6 millimeters of rainfall in this province (Tehran) in autumn,” said Shahrokh Fateh, head of the National Center for Drought and Crisis Management, which is affiliated to Iran’s Meteorological Organization. Fateh added that the precipitation was record low in the past 30 years.
Iran has embarked on projects for transferring water from the Persian Gulf or the Caspian Sea to the arid territories in eastern and central provinces. The Helmand River, a major source of water to the provinces in the southeast that border Afghanistan, has effectively dried up in most places, forcing many farmer families to leave their homes in villages and migrate to larger cities.
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