“Help the people.
Every day, farmers hold their small protest outside Varzaneh.
An estimated 97 percent of the country has faced some level of drought, Iran’s Meteorological Organization said.
The Zayandeh Roud river once watered this region, flowing down from the Zagros Mountains, through the city of Isfahan and through a string of farming towns like Varzaneh and its suburbs, home to 30,000 people, some 340 miles, south of the capital Tehran.
But it dried up years ago.
The fields around Varzaneh are now stretches of desiccated, salt-laced dirt.
Water has also been diverted to other regions.
Habib Ramazani, a 57-year-old who was at the protest with Benvidi, said he and his family used to get by farming wheat, cotton and beetroot.
No official pays attention to our miserable situation,” said Ramazani, a father of five.
The town boasts of sending hundreds of its men to fight in the long Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s — Ramazani was among the volunteers.