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By Anna Skinner
Associate News Editor
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Escalating conflict across the Middle East is placing drinking water at risk for millions, as missile and drone strikes encroach on the dense network of desalination plants that sustain much of the region.
New warnings from public health officials and fresh damage to critical infrastructure underscore how the war is shifting from an oil crisis to a water emergency.
Desalinated water is one of the Gulf’s most vulnerable lifelines. Hundreds of desalination facilities line the Persian Gulf coast, providing the vast majority of drinking water for countries such as Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Because these plants sit within range of Iranian missile and drone systems, any strike or debris from nearby attacks threatens to instantly compromise water supplies for millions of people living in one of the world’s driest regions.
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**"**The real underlying vulnerability for the region, of course, is water production," Michael Christopher Low, associate professor of history at the University of Utah and director of the Middle East Center, told Newsweek.
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The conflict, which began on February 28 with U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, has rapidly drawn fighting closer to major desalination hubs. On March 2, Iranian strikes near Dubai’s Jebel Ali port landed roughly 12 miles from one of the world’s largest desalination plants, a facility that produces much of the city’s drinking water, an Associated Press report said. Damage has also been reported at the Fujairah F1 power and water complex in the UAE and Kuwait’s Doha West desalination plant, with impacts likely tied to nearby port strikes or falling debris.
The government of Bahrain has additionally accused Iran of damaging one of its desalination plants, further intensifying regional fears about the security of water infrastructure as the war expands.
Experts warn that the Gulf’s dependence on desalination, an engineering triumph that enabled cities to thrive where natural freshwater is nearly nonexistent, has created an unprecedented vulnerability. In Kuwait, about 90 percent of drinking water comes from desalination; in Oman, the figure is roughly 86 percent; and in Saudi Arabia, about 70 percent, the AP report said. Without these plants, many major cities across the region simply could not sustain their populations.
Should more attacks occur, impacts will depend on which facility is struck, Low said. For example, a strike on a Kuwait desalination plant would have much different impacts than in Saudi Arabia, which has a "bigger portfolio of large plants" to mitigate the impact.
"There could be a real big impact if you hit the right plants or if there was a coordinated attack across multiple plants," Low said, adding that a coordinated attack would be catastrophic. "Iran has the military capacity to strike all of these targets, and that's what worries me."
In some cases, desalination plants serve millions of people, and the plants are vulnerable to myriad attacks aside from a direct strike, David Michel, a senior associate with the Global Food and Water Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told Newsweek. In many cases, these plants are co-located with an energy facility, so a strike that hits the energy facility or targets grid connections could "interrupt service indefinitely" when it comes to the desalination plant, Michel said. Disruption can also occur by fouling the plant's intake systems that bring seawater into the plant, such as by an oil spill.
"Significant disruptions" could occur if attacks are made on a large scale or if they are repeated, Michel said. Such attacks could "interrupt services for significant portions of the population for some time." In some cases, drinking water might need to be shipped to the affected region.
The full impact depends on the type of attack, the location, and what reserves that area has when it comes to water supply.
As the war drags on and attacks inch closer to these facilities, officials say the threat is no longer theoretical. A strike on a major desalination installation, or the power systems that enable it, could disrupt water to millions, compounding a humanitarian crisis already unfolding across multiple countries.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made a call for peace on Monday morning, while also warning that food, water, and air would become contaminated from the fighting.
"The escalating conflict in the Middle East, and the impact on public health, are of great concern. Damage to petroleum facilities in #Iran risks contaminating food, water and air – hazards that can have severe health impacts especially on children, older people, and people with pre existing medical conditions," he posted on X. "Rain laden with oil has been reported falling in parts of the country. In #Lebanon, nine health workers have been killed since 28 February and 16 injured. Additionally, 43 primary health care centres and 5 hospitals have closed due to evacuation orders."
"WHO is monitoring the situation in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and all affected countries closely and supporting local authorities to keep health systems running, protect communities, and reduce health risks," the post continued. "I urge all parties to de-escalate and prevent further risks to people’s health, impacts on health facilities and workers, a further expansion of the conflict across the region. Peace is always the best medicine."
And although a coordinated, multi-pronged attack on the region's desalination plants would be an "escalation of epic proportions," Low told Newsweek, he warned that it's "unpredictable the kind of action [Iran] might take."
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