Kuwait city: As the US-Israel war with Iran escalates, a troubling reality is coming into focus: critical water systems are increasingly caught in the crosshairs of modern conflict. From desalination plants in the Middle East to dams and pipelines in other war zones, the targeting of water infrastructure is emerging as a powerful and dangerous instrument of warfare.
According to Anadolu Agency, over the weekend, airstrikes and drone attacks struck desalination facilities in Iran and Bahrain, raising fears that the conflict could spill into systems that sustain daily life for tens of millions in one of the world’s most water-scarce regions. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the US of striking a desalination facility on Qeshm Island, saying the attack disrupted water supplies to roughly 30 villages and warning it could have ‘grave consequences.’ Washington denied involvement.
A day later, Bahraini officials said an Iranian drone caused material damage to a desalination plant in the island nation, though authorities said the incident did not affect water supplies. The threat comes at a particularly sensitive moment for the region as temperatures climb toward the peak of summer months, when water demand surges. Experts warn that even temporary disruptions could quickly create humanitarian risks.
‘Desalination plants provide anywhere from roughly half of national water supplies to nearly 90% in some Gulf countries,’ said Mohammed Mahmoud, a water security expert and Middle East lead at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. ‘When you impact infrastructure that generates the water supply and it goes offline, it creates a really dangerous situation,’ he told Anadolu.
The strategic importance of desalination was highlighted in a 2010 CIA assessment, which warned that disruption of Gulf desalination systems ‘could have more serious consequences than the loss of any other industry or commodity.’ Since then, the dependence has grown alongside the region’s rapid development. Major cities such as Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, Kuwait City, and Jeddah are now almost entirely dependent on desalinated water supplies.
Across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, there were roughly 815 desalination plants, representing about 31% of global desalination capacity, drawing seawater from the Arabian Gulf in 2023. Governments are also planning to nearly double that capacity in the coming years, with more than $53 billion expected to be invested in new desalination projects. Currently, about 83% of the Middle East population faces severe renewable water scarcity, a figure projected to approach nearly 100% by 2050 as climate change intensifies, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI).
The incidents in the Gulf reflect a wider global trend in which water systems are increasingly caught up in conflict. A recent assessment by the Pacific Institute, a global think tank focused on water, found that violence linked to water resources has reached record levels globally. According to the institute, 420 water-related violence events were recorded in 2024 – a 20% increase over 2023 and a 78% rise compared with 2022.
Experts categorize water-related violence in three main ways: water used as a weapon, water infrastructure damaged as a casualty of conflict, or disputes over water acting as a trigger for violence. David Michel, a senior associate with the global food and water security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), explained that water can become a weapon of war. ‘Water can be used as a tool directly to withhold water sources from adversaries or to flood territory controlled by an adversary,’ he said.
International humanitarian law prohibits attacks on infrastructure essential to civilian survival, including water systems, but that does not mean these sorts of attacks are new. ‘There has absolutely been recorded and historical evidence in recent years of the weaponization of water in times of conflict, which is actually a war crime,’ Mahmoud said. He pointed to the rise of ISIS (Daesh) in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2016, when the terrorist group seized dams and manipulated water flows to control communities and punish rivals.
While recent strikes in the Iran conflict have not yet reached that scale, analysts say they represent an alarming signal. ‘Further direct deliberate attacks on desalination plants would be one of the most explicit direct signals of weaponization of water,’ Michel said. ‘Targeting the infrastructure would amount to deliberate attempts to disrupt the lives and welfare of the essentially innocent.’
The Pacific Institute’s analysis shows that 61% of water-related violence in 2024 involved direct attacks on water infrastructure, while 34% stemmed from disputes over water access or control, and 5% involved the deliberate use of water as a weapon of war. ‘There were four times more water conflicts recorded between 2012 and 2021 than there were in the preceding decade,’ Michel said.
Beyond conflict, experts say rising demand, climate change, and ineffective water management are also increasing tensions over water resources. Global water demand is expected to increase by 20-30% by 2050, while climate change is disrupting rainfall patterns and increasing the frequency of floods and droughts.