The decline of Tehran’s qanats is rooted less in environmental processes than in a fundamental deviation and error in the interpretation of this phenomenon. The central concern of this study is a critique of dominant approaches in urban management that, by reducing the qanat to an isolated technical object or merely an underground channel, have fallen into a form of ontological impoverishment in their engagement with this water infrastructure. The findings of this critique demonstrate that the dominance of fragmented, divergent forms of knowledge and a one-dimensional technocratic perspective at the epistemological level has been directly projected onto the ontological level, resulting either in incomplete physical restoration projects or in the complete removal of qanats from the urban infrastructure network. Within this paradigm, the qanat has been transformed from an integrated, identity-forming system into a meaningless water flow trapped within the confines of technical rationality.

By critiquing this approach, the article argues that the preservation of qanats, prior to any engineering intervention, requires an ontological redefinition within the framework of a landscape infrastructure approach; a holistic perspective that understands the qanat not merely as a water-supply mechanism, but as a reflection of the Iranian mode of human–nature interaction and as a vital artery encompassing both tangible and intangible dimensions. Only through overcoming this interpretive error and returning to a multilayered and comprehensive understanding can a sustainable model for the governance and revitalization of qanats be achieved.