Water reserves in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city and one of its most important religious centers, have fallen below 3 percent of capacity, putting the city’s 4 million residents on the brink of a major water emergency. The crisis in Mashhad is just one sign of a nationwide catastrophe , as Iran faces up to the consequences of worsening droughts, record-low rainfall and decades of mismanaged water resources. Policies that favored building new dams and drilling deep wells over maintaining