The impacts of climate change on arid regions such as Iran are unavoidable, with agriculture and water being the most vulnerable sectors. Although the development of adaptation policies is crucial, the first step to this task should be to assess ongoing policies. The present study evaluates four macro-level documents that have the strongest effects on water and agricultural policies in Iran from the perspective of adaptation to climate change. Two frameworks have been applied to evaluate the "integrity" and "maladaptation" aspects of the documents. It was found that the themes most often considered in the documents were 'improving resiliency and adaptive capacity' and "responding to changes in water availability." The least-considered themes were 'responding to increased irrigation requirements' and 'responding to changes in agricultural land use.' In general, the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan shows acceptable accordance with the evaluated criteria. However, potential concerns exist about maladaptation because of policies such as self-sufficiency for strategic crops and excessive reliance on improving irrigation efficiency to reduce agricultural water consumption. The methodology used in this study can be recommended for similar studies elsewhere. (c) 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.