As conflict rages in the Gulf, many are focussed on oil – but water is also a major concern

The fast-expanding war between the United States, Israel, and Iran has captured global attention largely because it is disrupting oil and gas supplies from the Persian Gulf. Yet another resource is now emerging as far more critical to the survival of the region’s societies. Water. Recent attacks and near misses involving desalination plants in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Iran have exposed an uncomfortable reality. The Gulf states are not only energy exporters but also water dependent societies whose survival rests on a fragile network of coastal desalination facilities.

For decades the Gulf monarchies invested enormous wealth from oil into building desalination infrastructure that could sustain life in one of the driest regions on earth. Natural freshwater is almost nonexistent across much of the Arabian Peninsula. Rainfall is sparse and irregular, rivers are virtually absent, and groundwater reserves have been heavily depleted through decades of extraction. Desalination therefore became the technological solution that allowed desert cities such as Dubai, Doha, and Riyadh to grow into global urban hubs. Oil and gas built the Gulf economies, but desalinated seawater sustains the populations that inhabit them.

Today the scale of this dependence is staggering. Hundreds of desalination plants line the shores of the Persian Gulf, producing a large share of the world’s desalinated water. In Kuwait, roughly 90% of drinking water comes from desalination. Oman relies on it for about 86% of its supply. Saudi Arabia produces more desalinated water than any other country in the world, providing around seventy percent of its drinking water through these facilities. Even countries that have some groundwater reserves, such as the United Arab Emirates, still depend heavily on desalination to sustain their cities and industries.

The war has now revealed how vulnerable this system is. During the first days of the conflict, Iranian missile strikes landed near the massive desalination infrastructure around Dubai’s Jebel Ali port. Kuwait and the UAE reported damage to desalination related facilities after debris from intercepted drones fell near key complexes. Bahrain later confirmed that a drone strike caused damage to one of its desalination plants. Iran has also accused the United States of hitting a desalination facility on Qeshm Island, disrupting water supplies to dozens of villages.

Even if some of these incidents were collateral damage rather than deliberate attacks, they illustrate how exposed these installations are to modern warfare. Most desalination plants sit on open coastlines where they draw in seawater and discharge brine back into the ocean. They are large, centralised facilities integrated with power plants and energy infrastructure. Strikes against electricity networks, ports, or nearby military bases can easily disrupt water production. In many Gulf cities a handful of facilities supply millions of people. A successful strike against one major plant could shut down water supply for an entire metropolitan region within days.

This vulnerability is not new. Intelligence assessments by the US more than a decade and half ago warned that destroying key desalination facilities could trigger national crises in several Gulf states. A leaked diplomatic cable once warned that if Saudi Arabia’s Jubail desalination complex were disabled, the capital Riyadh might have to be evacuated within a week because most of its drinking water is pumped from that plant through a vast pipeline system. Such warnings were often treated as theoretical risks. The current war has turned them into immediate strategic concerns.

Smaller Gulf states face even greater exposure. Countries such as Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait possess limited strategic water reserves and smaller territorial space for diversifying supply systems. While the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have invested in storage reservoirs that can supply cities for several weeks, others rely on much thinner buffers. If desalination facilities were severely damaged during a prolonged conflict, water shortages could emerge rapidly.

The implications extend far beyond national borders. Much of the world’s attention has focused on how the war has affected oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. Yet a prolonged disruption of desalination infrastructure could trigger a humanitarian crisis across the Gulf. Cities built during the oil boom could quickly face water rationing, population displacement, and economic paralysis. Modern Gulf societies are technologically advanced but hydrologically fragile.

The attacks also reveal a troubling erosion of an emerging international norm that had gradually discouraged the targeting of water infrastructure during war. In recent decades there appeared to be growing recognition that water systems essential to civilian survival should remain off limits. International humanitarian law already prohibits the deliberate targeting of facilities indispensable to the survival of the population, including drinking water installations. Yet the conflicts of the past few years suggest that this restraint is weakening.

In Ukraine, water infrastructure has repeatedly been caught in the crossfire as dams and energy networks are attacked. In Gaza, water supply systems have been damaged or destroyed by Israel amid intense urban warfare. The South Asia tensions between India and Pakistan have again pushed the Indus River water to be used as instruments of strategic pressure. The emerging pattern suggests that water is once again being weaponized in modern conflict.

The ongoing Gulf war is now pushing this trend even further. Desalination plants are the lifelines of desert societies, supplying the vast majority of their freshwater. Targeting them or even threatening to do so, can generate enormous political pressure. Iran may not have enough capacity to directly challenge the combined military power of the United States and Israel, but by using this tactic as a form of asymmetric warfare it could impose heavy costs on Gulf countries that host American bases by exposing their acute water vulnerability. Even limited attacks, or credible threats against these facilities, could generate widespread fear among populations whose daily survival depends on them.

The strategic consequences are profound. A war that began as a confrontation over power and domination could quickly evolve into a struggle over basic human survival. If desalination plants were systematically targeted, the result would not simply be an economic crisis but a humanitarian emergency across the Arabian Peninsula. Cities designed for millions could lose their water supply within days. Governments would face social panic and potential mass displacement.

Ironically Iran itself is less vulnerable to this specific threat. Although the country suffers from severe water scarcity and prolonged drought, it still relies largely on rivers, reservoirs, and underground aquifers rather than coastal desalination. While Iran has begun expanding desalination capacity along its southern coast, its water system is more geographically distributed than those of the Gulf monarchies. This difference creates a strategic imbalance in which Iran can threaten its neighbors’ water lifelines without facing identical exposure.

The current war therefore exposes a deeper paradox of technological progress in West Asia. Desalination made it possible to build prosperous cities in an inhospitable desert environment. Yet the same infrastructure that enabled this transformation has also created a new form of vulnerability. Concentrating a region’s entire freshwater supply in a few large coastal facilities turns water into a strategic target.

If the war continues to escalate, the world may soon discover that the most dangerous consequence is not the disruption of oil markets but the collapse of water security across the Gulf. Energy shocks can destabilise economies. Water shocks threaten human survival itself. In a region where desalination keeps entire societies alive, turning water infrastructure into a battlefield-risks unleashing a crisis that could dwarf the geopolitical stakes that triggered the war in the first place.

Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research and UNESCO Chair on International Water Cooperation at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Source: Scroll
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