Khuzestan province ordered government offices to shut at 11:00 on 19 July and to operate fully remotely on 20 July, citing a heatwave above 45C and the strain it places on the national power grid1.
Officials framed the order as administrative, describing it as a way of managing energy consumption and ensuring power network stability. Bushehr province sits under a 50C warning, and Isfahan, Yazd and Sistan and Baluchestan were placed on alert without formal closures. Emergency services, hospitals and fire departments kept normal schedules.
The Iranian source attributes the closures to heat. It does not attribute the grid strain to war damage, and we are not going to supply a link the reporting declines to make. Both facts sit in the same province in the same week. Khuzestan is where CENTCOM struck Ahvaz and a water station on 19 July, and where the Darkhovin construction site was hit that same night.
Iranian utilities have been losing capacity elsewhere as well. Roughly 700km away on the Gulf of Oman coast, missiles hit the desalination pumps and power feed at the Bonji plant at Jask, in Hormozgan, cutting water to about 20 villages and an estimated 10,000 people. Whatever the cause of the closures in Ahvaz, the people asked to work from home through a 45C afternoon are the same people living under the strikes.
