The Middle East is running out of water. It is a statement that seems both banal and unduly apocalyptic. Desert covers most of the region, and many countries exhausted their renewable freshwater supply decades ago. Yet water runs freely from the tap in most thickly populated areas, and the “water wars” widely predicted by spy shops and think tanks are not on the horizon. But as Middle East Report 254 demonstrates, the region has indeed entered a new water era whose consequences for ordinary people could be no less tragic.