As conflict spreads across the Middle East, attention is shifting from oil to a more immediate risk: water. Heavy reliance on desalination plants leaves Gulf nations vulnerable, raising fears that attacks on infrastructure could threaten drinking water for millions.
As war in the Middle East escalates the attention again shifts to the region’s oil exports. While this time, the focus is not just oil it is far more prosaic: drinking water.
Continuous strikes, cyberattack, repatriation and contamination of food and water bodies have damaged the lives of Middle Eastern states. Analysts warn that water infrastructure may become a critical vulnerability in the conflict.
Around half of the world’s population faces seasonal water scarcity, making water an increasingly politicised resource. About 90 per cent of Kuwait’s drinking water comes from desalination. The figure is 86 per cent in Oman and 70 per cent in Saudi Arabia.
Is desalinated water enough for Gulf?
Gulf countries account for over 40 per cent of the world’s desalinated water. But a region defined by extreme heat, and over no rainfall desalination is not a technical supplement to national life. It is just a source of living that makes national life possible.
Desalinated water is seawater or brackish water that has undergone a process to remove salt, minerals, and impurities.
The downside is the vulnerability of the installations, and the oil and gas consumption required to fire the power generators that run the plants.
Attack can contaminate region’s water
Qatar’s Prime Minister last year warned that any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could entirely contaminate the region’s waters and threaten life in Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait.
He also added that Qatar has already witnessed that it could run out of potable water after just three days in such a scenario, prompting the construction of 15 massive water reservoirs to expand emergency reserves.
Gulf states depend on desalinised plants
About 100 million people live in the countries belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman — which are all now under the Iranian attack.
Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are, for all practical purposes, completely dependent on the desalination plants, particularly for metropolises such as Dubai. Saudi Arabia, and especially its capital, Riyadh, also relies heavily on them.
A leaked 2008 US diplomatic cable from Riyadh stated that the Jubail desalination plant supplied over 90 per cent of Riyadh’s drinking water and warned that the capital “would have to evacuate within a week” if the plant, its pipelines, or associated power infrastructure were seriously damaged or destroyed.
Iran’s recent attack on the Gulf nations is a part to internationalise the battlefield and raise the cost for Arab states of aligning with Washington. It would push GCC governments to treat water security as national survival rather than collateral risk.
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