Understanding the meaning of the local elites and local people around the Zab river's water transfer to Urumieh Lake.

The present research is carried out in a qualitative tradition using the grounded theory and seeks to answer the fundamental question that how the stakeholders of the source of water transfer (Zab river) understand and realize the phenomenon of water transfer to Lake Urmia and from their perspective, how do the conditions, interactions and consequences of this situation are represented. For collecting and analyzing data, deep interviewing technique (22 interviews) and group discussions (8 group discussions) were used by using purposeful sampling. The results are categorized in the form of the original 90 concepts, 13 core concepts and a nuclear category. The key categories are: the transformation of the livelihood of the people at the origin, the increase of ethnic sensitivities, the prosperity of agriculture in the land of the water transmission route, irreparable damage to agriculture, biological problems and leaving rural areas in the origin, the drying of Lake Urmia, health threats, changing the pattern of cultivation, Security attitudes to the phenomenon of water transfer, land price change, ethnic divergence, mediatorial look at transfer, environmental strategy, the escalation of poverty at original areas and the cost of the transfer process. The central core of which other categories are formed around it, and the theoretical model based on it, is the risks and consequences of the transfer of water, which has been interpreted in the course of the story. Research findings indicate that residents of the study area are sensitive to the inter-basin water transfer phenomenon and regard water as a political commodity, which could become the source of serious conflicts in the region. It seems that the issue of water transfer before being a technical issue it carries social and cultural issues that neglect of this issue, while jeopardizing heavy investments in this area, it may cause economic, Social, political and security consequences.