Fears Iran might reduce off Gulf’s water: Drones hit Bahrain’s desalination plant very important for purifying water – with specialists warning comparable assaults elsewhere might pressure main cities akin to Riyadh to evacuate

As the Gulf continues to spiral into deeper and deeper violence, civilian infrastructure is increasingly being targeted by warring military powers. 

Among these are desalination plants, which have become essential to human life in the arid region. 

Experts have warned that if desalination plants stay in the cross-hairs of warring nations, entire cities may have to be evacuated. 

On Sunday, Bahrain said that an Iranian drone had caused ‘material damage’ to one of its plants on the island nation, accusing the regime of ‘indiscriminately’ attacking civilian targets.

A day prior to that, Iran accused the US of attacking a desalination plant on Qeshm Island, affecting the water supply for 30 villages.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi accused the US of setting a ‘precedent’, calling Saturday’s attack ‘a dangerous move with grave consequences’. The US has denied that its forces were responsible. 

Dr. Marc Owen Jones, a professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, told Radio 4’s Today programme this morning: ‘They’re crucial. The absence of [these plants] would be huge. In Riyadh, if certain desalination plants were attacked, [the city] would have to evacuate after about a week. 

‘It’s not just attacks on desalination plants. These are energy intensive, so if you attack the energy infrastructure, you can’t power them and they [will go] offline.’ 

He accused Iran of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure as a way to pressure its Gulf neighbours into trying to end the current war early. 

‘[Iran’s attacks] are meant to create a level of panic. There are people whose decision to stay or leave depend on the situation escalating whether, for example, you think or believe that water could become scarce through these desalination attacks. It might be the key decision to make you leave, or create panic in the streets. 

‘If you’re the Iranian regime, one of the things they’ve been trying to do through the information war is to essentially put pressure on Gulf governments to put pressure on the US and Israel to deescalate the situation. 

‘If Gulf governments believe that water infrastructure is under attack, they would be more likely to put pressure on the US to try and end the war.’ 

The war that began on February 28 with US and Israeli attacks on Iran has already brought fighting close to key desalination infrastructure. 

On March 2, Iranian strikes on Dubai’s Jebel Ali port landed some 12 miles from one of the world’s largest desalination plants, which produces much of the city’s drinking water.

Damage also was reported at the Fujairah F1 power and water complex in the United Arab Emirates, and at Kuwait’s Doha West desalination plant. The damage at the two facilities appeared to have resulted from nearby port attacks or debris from intercepted drones.

Dr. Noha Aboueldahab, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, told the Today programme said: ‘Iran has said it is within its right to exercise its self-defence. There are limits to how it exercises this self-defence. 

‘Attacks on desalination plants, whether in Bahrain or elsewhere, are unlawful.’  

The whole region is dependant on these plants. Hundreds of desalination plants sit along the Persian Gulf coast, putting individual systems that supply water to millions within range of Iranian missile or drone strikes. Without them, major cities could not sustain their current populations.

In Kuwait, about 90% of drinking water comes from desalination, along with roughly 86% in Oman and about 70% in Saudi Arabia. The technology removes salt from seawater – most commonly by pushing it through ultra-fine membranes in a process known as reverse osmosis – to produce the freshwater that sustains cities, hotels, industry and some agriculture across one of the world’s driest regions.

For people living outside the Middle East, the main concern of the Iran war has been the impact on energy prices. The Gulf produces about a third of the world’s crude exports and energy revenues underpin national economies. Fighting has already halted tanker traffic through key shipping routes and disrupted port activity, forcing some producers to curb exports as storage tanks fill.

But the infrastructure that keeps Gulf cities supplied with drinking water may be equally vulnerable.

‘Everyone thinks of Saudi Arabia and their neighbours as petrostates. But I call them saltwater kingdoms. They’re manmade fossil-fueled water superpowers,’ said Michael Christopher Low, director of the Middle East Centre at the University of Utah. 

‘It’s both a monumental achievement of the 20th century and a certain kind of vulnerability.’ 

Gulf governments and US officials have long recognised the risks these systems pose for regional stability: if major desalination plants were knocked offline, some cities could lose most of their drinking water within days. 

A 2010 CIA analysis warned attacks on desalination facilities could trigger national crises in several Gulf states, and prolonged outages could last months if critical equipment were destroyed.

More than 90% of the Gulf’s desalinated water comes from just 56 plants, the report stated, and ‘each of these critical plants is extremely vulnerable to sabotage or military action.’

A leaked 2008 US 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 or associated power infrastructure were seriously damaged.

Saudi Arabia has since invested in pipeline networks, storage reservoirs and other redundancies designed to cushion short-term disruptions, as has the UAE. But smaller states such as Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait have fewer backup supplies. 

Many Gulf desalination plants are physically integrated with power stations as co-generation facilities, meaning attacks on electrical infrastructure could also hinder water production. 

Even where plants are connected to national grids with backup supply routes, disruptions can cascade across interconnected systems, said David Michel, senior fellow for water security at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

‘It’s an asymmetrical tactic,’ he 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.’

Desalination plants have multiple stages – intake systems, treatment facilities, energy supplies – and damage to any part of that chain can interrupt production, according to Ed Cullinane, Middle East editor at Global Water Intelligence, a publisher serving the water industry.

‘None of these assets are any more protected than any of the municipal areas that are currently being hit by ballistic missiles or drones,’ Cullinane said. 

As warming oceans increase the likelihood and intensity of cyclones in the Arabian Sea and raise the chances of landfall on the Arabian Peninsula, storm surge and extreme rainfall could overwhelm drainage systems and damage coastal desalination.

The plants themselves contribute to the problem. Desalination is energy-intensive, with plants worldwide producing between 500 and 850 million tons of carbon emissions annually, approaching the roughly 880 million tons emitted by the entire global aviation industry.

The by-product of desalination, highly concentrated brine, is typically discharged back into the ocean, where it can harm seafloor habitats and coral reefs, while intake systems can trap and kill fish larvae, plankton and other organisms at the base of the marine food web.

As climate change intensifies droughts, disrupts rainfall patterns and fuels wildfires, desalination is expected to expand in many parts of the world.

During Iraq’s 1990-1991 invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War, Iraqi forces sabotaged power stations and desalination facilities as they retreated, said the University of Utah’s Low. At the same time, millions of barrels of crude oil were deliberately released into the Persian Gulf, creating one of the largest oil spills in history.

The massive slick threatened to contaminate seawater intake pipes used by 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 water imports. Full recovery took years.

More recently, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have targeted Saudi desalination facilities amid regional tensions.

The incidents underscore a broader erosion of long-standing norms against attacking civilian infrastructure, Michel said, noting conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Iraq.

International humanitarian law, including provisions of the Geneva Conventions, prohibit targeting civilian infrastructure indispensable to the survival of the population, including drinking water facilities.

The potential for harmful cyberattacks on water infrastructure is a growing concern. In 2023 and 2024, US officials blamed Iran-aligned groups for hacking into several American water utilities.

After a fifth year of extreme drought, water levels in Tehran’s five reservoirs plunged to some 10% of their capacity, prompting President Masoud Pezeshkian to warn the capital may have to be evacuated.

Unlike many Gulf states that rely heavily on desalination, Iran still gets most of its water from rivers, reservoirs and depleted underground aquifers. The country operates a relatively small number of desalination plants, supplying only a fraction of national demand.

Iran is racing to expand desalination along its southern coast and pump some of the water inland, but infrastructure constraints, energy costs and international sanctions have sharply limited scalability.

‘They were already thinking of evacuating the capital last summer,’ Cullinane of Global Water Intelligence 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.’