Iran Press/ Iran News: Firouz Ghasemzadeh spokesman for Iran's water industry, emphasized that the only agreement Iran signed with Turkey in the past years regarding the water share of the Aras River and The Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) is related to one of the tributaries of the Aras River, which includes a small water share.
In The Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), Turkey will build 22 dams and 19 electric power plants in the Euphrates rivers and The Ilısu Dam on the Tigris near the village of Ilısu.
According to experts, by constructing dams, Turkey will store more than 60,000 billion cubic meters of water from the water share of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Firouz Ghasemzadeh, the spokesman of Iran's water industry, in a press conference in Tehran, said, we have proposed that Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Iran sign a treaty about the Aras River so that the water share of the four countries is observed and we are waiting for Turkey's decision and proposal.
Firouz Ghasemzadeh also said about the water share of the Hirmand River: Twenty-five meetings have been held between Iran and Afghanistan, but there are still differences of opinion regarding technical issues.
According to a treaty that was concluded in 1973, Afghanistan is committed to sharing the waters of the Hirmand River with Iran and supplying it with 26 cubic meters of Hirmand water per second or 850 million cubic meters per annum.
Afghanistan's failure to abide by the agreement has accelerated an environmental disaster in southwestern Afghanistan and eastern Iran.
The annual 850 million cubic meters of water for Iran has been initially allocated for drinking and irrigation of farmlands, which falls far short of the minimum flow required to feed Hamoon wetlands, which straddle the Iran-Afghan common border and are provided by the Hirmand River.
In 1950, Iran and Afghanistan created the Hirmand River Delta Commission tasked with measuring and dividing river flow between the two countries and hammered out the treaty in 1973.
However, political events such as a 1973 coup in Afghanistan, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the subsequent civil war and Taliban rule damaged the fate of the Hamoon wetlands.
In the last two decades, the fertile wetlands have substantially dried up. The Taliban government closed the sluices to the Kajaki dam on Hirmand until 2002. This compounded the impact of the worst drought the region has experienced in many decades, caused in part by climate change and warming temperatures.
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