\n<\/p>\n
Two weeks into the war in Iran, two water desalination plants in the region have been damaged in military operations, raising concerns over the vulnerability of a system that serves as a lifeline for millions across the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Note: Includes plants that are \u201cpresumed online\u201d. Does not include plants with a capacity below 1,000 cubic meters per day.<\/span> Source: Global Water Intelligence, DesalData.com.<\/span> <\/p>\n Last week, Abbas Araghchi, Iran\u2019s foreign minister, said an attack on a desalination plant on Qeshm Island, in the Persian Gulf, on March 7 had affected the water supply to 30 villages. While Iran blamed the United States for the attack, the Pentagon has denied responsibility, as has Israel.<\/p>\n And in Bahrain, the Interior Ministry blamed an Iranian drone for \u201cmaterial damage\u201d to a desalination plant, though the country\u2019s water and electricity authority said water supplies had not been affected.<\/p>\n Over the last few decades, the arid countries of the Persian Gulf have become increasingly reliant on desalination plants to supply water to cities and towns.<\/p>\n Desalination plants have become crucial infrastructure in places like Qatar and Bahrain, both of which now rely on the technology for more than 50 percent of their fresh water.<\/p>\n Note: Data for Israel, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran as of 2022. All other countries as of 2025.<\/span> Sources: Global Water Intelligence; Food and Agriculture Organization AQUASTAT.<\/span> <\/p>\n Efforts to remove salt from seawater and brackish groundwater in the Middle East go back more than a century. But desalination plants have proliferated on the Persian Gulf as climate change has made droughts more frequent and severe, and as desalination technology has improved.<\/p>\n Damage to a single large desalination plant, including a plant shutdown, could have immediate and widespread effects on the region, said Menachem Elimelech, an environmental engineer at Rice University.<\/p>\n The Al Dur plant in Bahrain, for example, supplies over one million people with water each day, providing more than a third of the country\u2019s needs. Desalination facilities are complex, and extensive damage could take a long time to repair.<\/p>\n While countries like the United Arab Emirates have tried to build up strategic water reserves, analysts say that some stocks would be depleted within days.<\/p>\n \u201cThe response would be to truck in bottled water, mobile desalination systems, tanker water,\u201d said David Michel, a fellow in the Global Food and Water Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy research organization. \u201cThose supply chains exist,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that\u2019s still a huge logistical hurdle. It\u2019s extremely disruptive.\u201d<\/p>\n International law prohibits attacking or destroying infrastructure indispensable to the survival of civilians. That includes water infrastructure, food supplies and energy systems.<\/p>\n Still, the episodes on Qeshm Island and Bahrain \u201cappear to not be inadvertent or collateral damage, but an intentional, direct targeting of those systems,\u201d Mr. Michel said. \u201cSo the signal has been sent that those systems could be at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re targeting water infrastructure, you\u2019re directly affecting a civilian population,\u201d said Mohammed Mahmoud, Middle East Lead for the U.N. University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. \u201cThat’s absolutely a war crime to attack infrastructure that civilians are so dependent on, on either side.”<\/p>\n A seawater desalination plant in Hadera, one of dozens of such facilities in Israel.<\/span> ABIR SULTAN\/EPA-EFE\/REX\/Shutterstock<\/span><\/p>\n A water tanker in front of a home in western Iran in 2021.<\/span> Solmaz Daryani for The New York Times<\/span><\/p>\n Even if desalination plants aren\u2019t targeted directly, damage to surrounding facilities could still disrupt their operations. Some plants draw water from the sea, raising the prospect that polluted water could clog plant filters or contaminate pipes.<\/p>\n \u201cSay there is an oil spill next to the intake to the desalination plant,\u201d Mr. Elimelech said. \u201cThat would practically kill the desalination plant.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1991, the United States accused Iraq of deliberately spilling millions of gallons of Kuwaiti crude oil into the Persian Gulf with the intention of crippling desalination capacity or thwarting an amphibious invasion.<\/p>\n That created a nine-mile oil slick and prompted a monthslong effort to keep the oil from shuttering a desalination plant that supplied half of the drinking water for Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Oil spills on land, meanwhile, infiltrated many of Kuwait\u2019s aquifers.<\/p>\n Energy infrastructure is another vulnerability. Desalination plants are energy\u2011intensive, and many are built on sites shared with oil, gas and renewable power plants. They risk losing power if nearby facilities are damaged or taken offline.<\/p>\n Riyadh, for example, is supplied by water pumped hundreds of kilometers from the coast. Damage to a water pipeline could interrupt supplies even if desalination plants remained operational.<\/p>\n Countries like the United Arab Emirates heavily subsidize desalinated water, allowing for copious consumption of water, including watering golf courses and other luxury uses that would otherwise be economically unsustainable in a desert, Mr. Michel said. But that has hampered investment in water efficiency and increased the region\u2019s dependence on desalinated water.<\/p>\n Some nations have taken measures to bolster their reserve supplies of water. There has also been talk of interconnecting water supply systems internationally. But that hasn\u2019t moved ahead amid regional rivalries and mistrust, Dr. Mahmoud of the U.N. University said.<\/p>\n Those efforts have been tricky, he said, because states prefer self\u2011reliance over shared systems. \u201cBut what do you do when you lose your water lifeline?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two weeks into the war in Iran, two water desalination plants in the region have been damaged in military operations, raising concerns over the vulnerability of a system that serves as a lifeline for millions across the Middle East. Note: Includes plants that are \u201cpresumed online\u201d. Does not include plants with a capacity below 1,000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[7641,898,84,897,2796,261,1183],"class_list":{"0":"post-46735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-concern","9":"tag-east","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-middle","12":"tag-raising","13":"tag-war","14":"tag-water"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Share of water from desalination plants<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n