Missiles and drones from the war that began Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran have come within range of hundreds of desalination plants along the Persian Gulf coast — facilities that supply drinking water to millions across one of the world’s driest regions. Bahrain accused Iran on Sunday of damaging one of its desalination plants. Iran’s foreign minister said a U.S. airstrike damaged a plant on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz, cutting water to 30 villages.
Analysts warn that water, not oil, may be the most vulnerable resource in the conflict zone. More than 90 percent of the Gulf’s desalinated water flows from just 56 plants — each of which, according to a 2010 CIA analysis, is “extremely vulnerable to sabotage or military action.”
Strikes reach key infrastructure
The conflict has already tested facilities across the region. On March 2, Iranian strikes on Dubai’s Jebel Ali port fell approximately 12 miles from one of the world’s largest desalination plants, which supplies much of the city’s drinking water. The Fujairah F1 power and water complex in the United Arab Emirates remained fully operational following nearby strikes, its operator confirmed. Damage was reported at Kuwait’s Doha West desalination plant, apparently from nearby port attacks or debris from intercepted drones.
Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, said Iran had indiscriminately attacked civilian targets and damaged one of its plants, though it did not say supplies had gone offline. Iran said a U.S. airstrike on Qeshm Island had cut water to 30 villages. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said that in striking first, “the U.S. set this precedent, not Iran.”
Many Gulf desalination plants are co-generation facilities physically integrated with power stations, meaning attacks on electrical infrastructure can also disrupt water production, said David Michel, senior fellow for water security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Disruptions, he said, can cascade across interconnected systems even where backup supply routes exist.
‘Saltwater kingdoms’
Kuwait gets about 90 percent of its drinking water from desalination, Oman roughly 86 percent, and Saudi Arabia about 70 percent, according to the Associated Press. The technology — most commonly reverse osmosis, which pushes seawater through ultrafine membranes — sustains cities, hotels, industry and some agriculture across one of the world’s driest inhabited regions.
“Everyone thinks of Saudi Arabia and their neighbors as petrostates. But I call them saltwater kingdoms. They’re human-made fossil-fueled water superpowers,” said Michael Christopher Low, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. “It’s both a monumental achievement of the 20th century and a certain kind of vulnerability.”
That vulnerability is concentrated. The 2010 CIA analysis stated that each of the 56 critical plants is “extremely vulnerable to sabotage or military action” and that prolonged outages could last months if critical equipment were destroyed. A leaked 2008 U.S. diplomatic cable warned the Saudi capital of Riyadh “would have to evacuate within a week” if either the Jubail desalination plant on the Gulf coast or its pipelines and associated power infrastructure were seriously damaged. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have since invested in storage reservoirs, pipeline networks and other redundancies, but smaller states such as Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait have fewer backup supplies.
An asymmetric pressure point
Analysts view the threat to desalination plants as an asymmetric instrument of leverage in the conflict.
“It’s an asymmetrical tactic,” Michel said. “Iran doesn’t have the same capacity to strike back at the United States and Israel. But it does have this possibility to impose costs on the Gulf countries to push them to intervene or call for a cessation of hostilities.”
Ed Cullinane, Middle East editor at Global Water Intelligence, said the plants carry no special protection. “None of these assets are any more protected than any of the municipal areas that are currently being hit by ballistic missiles or drones,” he said.
Desalination plants have multiple stages — intake systems, treatment facilities, energy supplies — and damage to any single part of the chain can interrupt production, Cullinane said.
Historical precedent
The threat to water infrastructure has precedent in the region. During Iraq’s 1990–1991 invasion of Kuwait, Iraqi forces sabotaged power stations and desalination facilities as they retreated. Iraqi forces simultaneously released millions of barrels of crude oil into the Persian Gulf, threatening to contaminate seawater intake pipes at desalination plants across the region. Workers rushed to deploy protective booms around the intake valves of major facilities. The destruction left Kuwait largely without fresh water and dependent on emergency imports, with full recovery taking years, according to Low.
International humanitarian law, including provisions of the Geneva Conventions, prohibits targeting civilian infrastructure indispensable to the survival of the population, including drinking water facilities. Michel said the current conflict reflects a broader erosion of those norms, citing conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Iraq.
Iran’s own water emergency
Iran enters the conflict in the grip of a severe water crisis. Tehran’s five reservoirs fell to about 10 percent of capacity after a fifth year of extreme drought, prompting President Masoud Pezeshkian to warn the capital may have to be evacuated. Unlike Gulf states that draw heavily on desalination, Iran still gets most of its water from rivers, reservoirs and depleted underground aquifers, and operates relatively few desalination plants. International sanctions have limited Iran’s capacity to expand.
“They were already thinking of evacuating the capital last summer,” Cullinane said. “I don’t dare to wonder what it’s going to be like this summer under sustained fire, with an ongoing economic catastrophe and a serious water crisis.”