Poor crisis management in the aftermath of the recent floods in Iran has highlighted the weaknesses of management in the country. In fact, deficiencies have become apparent on all levels — whether it's crisis prevention and management, or lack of coordination and clarity of responsibilities among various state organs. But before discussing some of the shortcomings, it is important to underline that the extent of the recent floods would have been difficult to manage for most countries in the world — and that disaster-related damages would have indeed been inevitable. Having said that, many experts have opined that the floods could have been managed more efficiently and the impact of mismanagement has been so extreme that some experts have called these floods a man-made disaster. 

Prior to the flooding, commentators argued that Iran had developed a strong sense of crisis management as a country that had faced numerous and regular natural disasters. Nonetheless, the recent failures have pointed to important deficiencies that need to be addressed.

A 2014 report from the Iranian National Disaster Management Organization found that “Iran has developed an effective and internationally recognized disaster preparedness and response capacity at the national and local levels, but disaster prevention and risk reduction are areas that will require extensive longer-term efforts as well as multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder planning in development sectors such as health, education and urban planning.” It added, “At the same time, comprehensive concepts and standards of risk reduction — which include social dimensions and physical aspects of disaster prevention — can be further improved.”

The above statement captures the key problems in crisis management that also connect directly to some of the governance issues in Iran.