The plants become targets: Gulf water in the 2026 war

Between about a third and 60 per cent of the world’s desalination capacity sits in the six Gulf Cooperation Council states, depending on whose count is used.^1 8 9 More than 90 per cent of the Gulf’s desalinated supply comes from 56 plants. Qatar takes 99 per cent of its drinking water from the sea, Bahrain and Kuwait over 90, Saudi Arabia about 70.⁷

That concentration had been attacked before. Iraqi forces intentionally destroyed most of Kuwait’s desalination capacity in the 1990 to 1991 Gulf War,⁹ and Saudi Arabia’s Shuqaiq plant later weathered Houthi attacks.⁷ The historian Michael Christopher Low has argued that attacks on desalination plants should be considered taboo.⁷

In 2026 the plants were drawn into the war. A wider war opened on 28 February, when the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, and on 7 March Iran’s foreign minister said a United States strike had hit a desalination plant on Qeshm Island, affecting water supply in about 30 villages. The plant was still out of service a month later. The United States and Israel both denied carrying out the attack.¹

A day later Bahrain’s interior ministry said an Iranian drone had damaged one of its desalination plants.^2 3 The same day Stars and Stripes reported Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, calling the strike retaliation for the US attack.³ By 28 April, according to the Arab Center Washington DC, Iran had denied attacking the desalination facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait and blamed Israel.¹ Kuwait reported repeated strikes on its stations. Its electricity ministry said a service building at a power and water desalination plant was hit on 30 March, killing an Indian worker; Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya military command denied responsibility and blamed Israel.⁴ Kuwait said a power and desalination plant was hit on 3 April, which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps denied, again blaming Israel, and that two more were damaged in overnight drone attacks two days later.^5 10 In July Kuwait’s electricity ministry said an Iranian attack on a power and water desalination plant had damaged a large number of electricity generation units; the report carried no Iranian response.⁶ After Israel confirmed striking the petrochemical complex at Assaluyeh, Iran said power and desalination units serving it were hit too.¹

Supply held. Bahrain’s Electricity and Water Authority said residents’ water and electricity services were unaffected. That is the clearest operational fact in the record.³ Bahrain’s interior ministry said three people were hurt by fragments of an Iranian missile in Muharraq.²

The record on one plant is contested rather than settled. In a report of 9 March, Sembcorp said its Fujairah plant had not been damaged, suggesting that damage in the industrial or port zone had been mistaken for damage to the plant.¹¹ Ten days later CSIS still noted reports that Fujairah F1 and Doha West had been damaged by missiles or falling debris.¹² A strike on Dubai’s Jebel Ali port landed close to a complex holding 43 desalination units, not on it.¹¹

The system held because the damage was limited, and because these are large fleets with redundancy. By late April no significant disruption to water supply had been reported.^1 12 Nothing in the public record establishes what would have happened to a state holding four days of water, had the damage been greater.

Six months on, the public record holds no announced, funded storage programme or hardening measure by a Gulf government or utility in response. GCC leaders did list water interconnection and strategic reserves among joint priorities at a meeting on 28 April.¹³ Qatar’s mega-reservoirs were inaugurated in December 2018 and Abu Dhabi’s Liwa reserve was completed that January, so both predate the war by more than seven years.^14 15 Either the spending is not happening or it is not being announced, and the public record does not say which.

The buffer itself is barely published. Compiled wartime estimates put Bahrain near four days, Saudi Arabia five to six, and Kuwait ten to fifteen. The United Arab Emirates is reported to hold two at normal consumption, rising to 16 under emergency rationing and 45 under severe. Qatar was reported to claim four months.¹ The estimates disagree because almost nobody publishes the number. For a region whose exposure is now demonstrated, that is itself a finding.

Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions prohibits attacking drinking water installations and other objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value.¹⁶ Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University’s water institute, said any attack on energy or water facilities would constitute a war crime.¹⁷ Kuwait reported a further strike in July.⁶

Dependence on the same sea did not prevent the strikes. On the available record, what kept the taps running was redundancy and the limited extent of the damage.^12 1

The historian Michael Christopher Low put the escalation plainly. The only rungs above this on the ladder were desalination plants and nuclear facilities, and both have now been targeted.⁷ Carnegie called the shift qualitative and proposed treating water infrastructure as a shared red line, with hydrological security handled as strategic security.¹⁸ The Arab Center in Washington urged that attacking water infrastructure be made a red line outright.¹

For a utility the consequences are unglamorous, and mostly not about walls. Storage duration decides how much damage matters, and it is the variable least published and least funded.^12 1 Distributed capacity is worth more than a single larger plant.¹² Chemicals arrive by sea, through a strait that Iran effectively closed and where mines were reportedly laid, although Iran never confirmed this.¹⁹ Chemical supply chains were reported to hold a few weeks of inventory, with at least six to nine months expected before meaningful supply came back online, assuming a ceasefire and no further destruction of facilities.²⁰