Climate change has caused pastoralists to face serious challenges all around the world. To reduce climate change vulnerability, adaptation strategies need to be adopted by pastoralists. In this regard, the present research was done to seek the reasons for the failure of the northeastern pastoralists of Iran in adopting climate change adaptation strategies. The study is descriptive, which conducted by a field survey. The target population included 249 pastoralists from 7 pastoral units, of whom 148 people were selected as sample size using the stratified random sampling technique. The survey instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire. The content validity and face validity of the questionnaire were checked by the experts. Convergent validity was also confirmed based on the average variance extracted (AVE). Cronbach’s α coefficient and composite reliability (CR) were used to evaluate the internal consistency of the questionnaire. The results showed that social and, regulatory and insurance components were the most critical internal and external weaknesses of the pastoralists’ failure in adopting climate change adaptation strategies, respectively. Structural equation modeling showed that external weaknesses had positive and significant effects on internal weaknesses of the pastoralists’ failure in adopting climate change adaptation strategies.