Climate change (CC) has destructive effects on the water resources limitations required for the agricultural production in the arid to semi-arid regions and countries of the world including Iran. The main objective of this research is to assess the role of the leading farmers of different regions of Iran in autonomous adaptation to water scarcity, drought and ultimately to confront CC. For this purpose field visits in four different regions of Iran were carried out during years 2017–18. Following the analysis of the collected data and information acquired from the field visits, the strategies and capacities of the selected leading farmers in adaptation to CC were evaluated using the international project criterion developed in the European Union, i.e. the BASE project. The results indicated that in all visited fields, the farmers recognized the water scarcity as their highest challenge. The farmers’ behaviour in response to water scarcity and CC implicitly indicates that the function of the past system, from type of function, cultivated area, agricultural pattern, and also revenue aspects not to change and to be continued with the help of modern systems as before (learning loop of the first type). The leading farmers have not much long-term visions on their business future, their farm, and the region they have their enterprise. From the learning loop aspects, the reaction of the government and the private sector are similar, i.e., the attempt for the preserving of the production level without sufficient attention to the long term impacts of their activities and therefore staying in the first learning loop.