{"id":17729,"date":"2026-03-13T14:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T14:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/17729\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T14:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T14:01:07","slug":"war-in-iran-poses-threat-to-critical-water-desalination-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/17729\/","title":{"rendered":"War in Iran poses threat to critical water desalination plants"},"content":{"rendered":"

The war in Iran<\/a> and attacks across the Middle East are disrupting the flow of oil, liquefied natural gas, and goods from the region to other parts of the world. Within the region, water is also at risk.<\/a><\/p>\n

Many Persian Gulf countries rely on desalination plants for drinking water. In this war, Iran has already accused the U.S. of attacking one of its plants<\/a>, and Bahrain has said<\/a> Iran hit and damaged a plant there with a drone.<\/p>\n

Water has always been an issue in the Middle East, said Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very arid region,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s a region with a very large and growing population and a growing economy, and growing demands on the limited water resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gleick said many Gulf countries have invested heavily in desalination plants<\/a> that can make sea water potable. Kuwait and Oman get about 90% of their water from desalination. In Saudi Arabia, it\u2019s about 70%.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf desalination plants were to come under systematic attack, it would be incredibly devastating for the region,\u201d Gleick said. \u201cIt would be enormously harmful to the economies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some countries have very little potable water stored, and could run out quickly. That would have ripple effects for drinking water and most industries, including farming, oil production, and tourism.<\/p>\n

International law prohibits attacks on civilian infrastructure<\/a>. But David Michel, senior associate with the Global Food and Water Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that hasn\u2019t prevented them from happening in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi forces not only deliberately destroyed desalination facilities in Kuwait on land, but they also dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf, and that oil clogged the intakes for Kuwait’s desalinated water supply,\u201d Michel said.<\/p>\n

More recently, Russia has attacked<\/a> critical water infrastructure in Ukraine. And Israel has done the same<\/a> in Gaza and the West Bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re increasingly seeing its use as a means to try and force concessions and raise the costs of conflict,\u201d Michel said.<\/p>\n

Marcus King, professor of environment and international affairs at Georgetown University, said he\u2019s worried there could be more intentional attacks<\/a> with the Iran war on desalination plants and other water infrastructure like pipelines, dams, and treatment facilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran does not have a lot of offensive capability left at this point, but one thing they can do is they can have sort of a multiplier effect by bombing desalination plants, because this really has a psychological impact on the population,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n

It has an impact that little else does, he said, because water is such a vital resource for life.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The war in Iran and attacks across the Middle East are disrupting the flow of oil, liquefied natural…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[5594,3255,49,39],"class_list":["post-17729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-persian-gulf","tag-desalination","tag-drinking-water","tag-middle-east","tag-persian-gulf"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116222235902753543","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}