Given the increasing and uncontrolled depletion of groundwater resources, rethinking the design of necessary management measures to maximize the potential of collective action among users has become an inevitable necessity. This study, addressing the absence of foresight-based and systematic analytical approaches, utilizes the Social–Ecological Systems Framework and the assumptions underlying self-organization of users to analyze how policy interventions impact ten key variables influencing the capacity of farmers for collective action in the Qaresou Basin. To assess these effects, causal relationships between the policy interventions outlined in Iran’s national document on water scarcity adaptation and the key variables were examined. The findings indicate that during the 18-year study period, in the absence of collective action and purposeful alignment between water and agricultural policies, social sustainability consistently posed a threat to ecological sustainability. In the tightly interwoven social–ecological system of the Qaresou Basin, this requires an analysis of the cumulative impact of interventions on policy-responsive variables including “user knowledge”, “collective-choice rules”," “local leadership”, “institutional trust”, and “system productivity” and contextual variables such as “resource importance”, “groundwater mobility”, and “the number of farming households”. This study provides a practical basis for assessing the implementation of participatory water management, in accordance with clause “T”, article 40 of the law of the seventh five-year development plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran.