Government offices in Iran are closed or operating at reduced hours. Schools and colleges have moved to online only. Highways and shopping malls have descended into darkness, and industrial plants have been denied power, bringing manufacturing to a near halt.

Although Iran has one of the biggest supplies of natural gas and crude oil in the world, it is in a full-blown energy crisis that can be attributed to years of sanctions, mismanagement, aging infrastructure, wasteful consumption — and targeted attacks by Israel.

“We are facing very dire imbalances in gas, electricity, energy, water, money and environment,” said President Masoud Pezeshkian in a live televised address to the nation this month. “All of them are at a level that could turn into a crisis.”

While Iran has been struggling with issues with its infrastructure for years, the president warned that the problem had reached a critical point.

For most of last week, the country was virtually shut down to save energy. As ordinary Iranians fumed and industrial leaders warned that the accompanying losses amounted to tens of billions of dollars, Mr. Pezeshkian could offer no solution other than to say he was sorry.

“We must apologize to the people that we are in a situation where they have to bear the brunt,” Mr. Pezeshkian said. “God willing, next year we will try for this not to happen.”

Officials have said the deficit in the amount of gas the country needs to function amounts to about 350 million cubic meters a day, and as temperatures have plunged and demand has spiked, officials have had to resort to extreme measures to ration gas.

The government faced two stark choices. It either had to cut gas service to residential homes or shut down the supply to power plants that generated electricity.

It chose the latter, as turning gas off to residential units would come with serious safety hazards and would cut off the primary source of heat for most Iranians.

“The policy of the government is to prevent at all costs cutting gas and heat to homes,” Seyed Hamid Hosseini, a member of the Chamber of Commerce’s energy committee, said in telephone interview. “They are scrambling to manage the crisis and contain the damage because this is like a powder keg that can explode and create unrest across the country.”

By Friday, 17 power plants had been completely taken off line and the rest were only partially operational.

Tavanir, the state power company, warned producers of everything from steel to glass to food products to medicine that they needed to brace for widespread power cuts that could last days or weeks. The news has sent both state-controlled and private industries into a tailspin.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/world/middleeast/iran-economy-energy-crisis.html