MENA Water Review · Visual story
One Sea, One Strait: How 2026 Strikes Exposed the Gulf’s Desalination Vulnerability
In 2022 the six Gulf states held about a third of the world’s desalination capacity. In 2026 attacks on desalination facilities on both shores of the Gulf were reported, with responsibility disputed.
Some 56 plants account for more than nine tenths of the Gulf’s desalinated water.
Most of the coast receives under 100 millimetres of rain a year and has no permanent river. Its aquifers are being depleted at rates far exceeding what nature can replenish. The remaining source is the sea, accessed through desalination.
Kuwait commissioned its first seawater desalination plant in the early 1950s. Desalination made it possible for large cities to stand where the water table could never have sustained them. But it also concentrated supply in a small number of sites, most of them on a single enclosed sea, replacing one form of scarcity with another.
For three of the six states, every seaborne input transits a single 34 km strait.
Interactive: choose a step, or use the arrows, to change the figure
The major facilities are distributed along the Arab shore, with clusters around Kuwait and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia’s Jubail and Ras al-Khair coast, and the UAE coast between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar hold a single coastline each, entirely on this sea. Point at any marker to identify the site.
The Strait of Hormuz is 34 km wide at its narrowest, by the EIA’s measure. Qatari and Emirati LNG exports passing through it make up about a fifth of world LNG trade.
Three of the six retain an alternative. Fujairah lies beyond the strait on the Gulf of Oman, Saudi Arabia operates about a dozen plants on the Red Sea serving its western regions, and most Omani plants face the open sea. On this measure the six are not comparable.
Water infrastructure reported damaged on both shores between March and July 2026. Only sites identified in the reporting carry a marker; where the affected plant was never named, the country carries a ring instead.
Notes
Plant positions are drawn from the MENA Water Review country map kit and are approximate. The 2026 markers record what each party reported; independent verification of strikes on water facilities has been limited.
Plants were deliberately destroyed in 1990–91; oil and algae have shut others.
Desalination plants have been hit both deliberately and accidentally. Iraqi forces destroyed most of Kuwait’s desalination capacity during the 1990–91 Gulf War. Oil contamination and an algal bloom also disrupted desalination operations, while the Shamoon malware hit Saudi Aramco computers, not water plants. A facility that draws open seawater beside a power station is exposed along several axes at once.
Water infrastructure was targeted during the 1990–91 Gulf War, and Houthi projectiles were later reported fired at the Saudi desalination site of Al-Shuqaiq in 2019 and 2022. What changed in 2026 was the scale: plants on both shores of the Gulf were reported hit.
- 1984–88
The Tanker War
Hundreds of ships are attacked in the closing years of the Iran–Iraq war, and the United States reflags Kuwaiti tankers to give them naval escort. The plants’ fuel and supplies share those lanes.
- 1990–91
Kuwait’s plants are destroyed
During the occupation Iraqi forces purposely destroy most of Kuwait’s desalination capacity and release millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf; on withdrawing they set more than six hundred wells alight. Booms go up across the Saudi intakes and some plants shut down nonetheless.
- 2008–09
The red tide
An algal bloom closes plants in Oman and the UAE for up to two months. At Fujairah 1 the reverse-osmosis plant is down for more than a week.
- 2012
Shamoon
Malware wipes about 30,000 Saudi Aramco computers in a single day. US intelligence sources attribute it to Iran.
- 2019
Abqaiq
Missiles and drones briefly cut 5.7 million barrels a day, over half of Saudi production.
- 2019–22
Strikes near Al-Shuqaiq
A Houthi rocket explodes near the Al-Shuqaiq plant on the Red Sea without damaging it; a desalination facility there is targeted again in 2022.
- 2020
Cyberattack on Israel’s water systems
A cyberattack widely attributed to Iran targets Israel’s water systems. Officials say chemicals could have been mixed in the wrong proportions.
- 2025
Twelve days in June
War reaches the Gulf: GPS jamming spreads, Iran’s parliament votes on closing Hormuz, and missiles are fired at Al Udeid. No plant is reported hit.
- 2026
Water facilities are hit
After the war opens on 28 February, water infrastructure is reported hit on both shores: six incidents reported by Kuwait, one of them at a named plant; a Bahraini plant that is not named; and three Iranian sites, by Iran’s account. Most of these reports are contested.
In 2026 plants on both shores were reported damaged. Only Iranian officials reported supply cut off.
On 2 March, a fragment of an intercepted drone ignited a fire at Doha West in Kuwait; the ministry reported minor material damage. Iran stated that a US strike had left the plant on Qeshm Island inoperable, interrupting supply to 30 villages; the United States and Israel denied carrying out the attack. On 8 March Bahrain stated that an Iranian drone had damaged one of its plants but that supply was maintained. The same day, Stars and Stripes reported Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, calling the strike retaliation for the US attack; by 28 April, Iran had denied attacking the desalination facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait and blamed Israel, according to the Arab Center Washington DC.
The heaviest damage came later. Kuwait said an attack on a power and desalination plant on 30 March killed a worker, which Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya military command denied, blaming Israel; it reported another attack on 3 April, which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps denied, again blaming Israel; drone damage to two plants on 5 April; and attacks on 17 and 18 July. The ministry then urged residents to ration electricity at peak hours. That same weekend, Iranian officials stated that a US strike had destroyed the pumping station at Bonji, near Jask. They said it cut off 20 villages and some 10,000 people during extreme summer heat; US Central Command did not disclose any strikes on civilian infrastructure.
Reported population figures for Iranian water facilities hit by strikes, as given by Iranian officials
Notes
At Sirik the figure is the population the reservoirs serve; the United States said it targeted communications and radar sites. Both are in Iran, and both are the only incidents with a published population. Iran also reported 30 villages cut off at Qeshm without giving a number of people. Kuwait and Bahrain reported damage to plants without interruption to supply. Most of these strikes are contested. Kuwait and Bahrain attribute theirs to Iran. Iran denied the 30 March and 3 April attacks in Kuwait and blamed Israel. On Bahrain, Iran’s foreign minister was reported on 8 March calling the strike retaliation; by 28 April Iran had denied attacking the plants in Bahrain and Kuwait and blamed Israel. Iran attributes its losses to the United States, which denied striking the Qeshm plant and has not confirmed any strike on a water facility. Independent verification of the reports has been limited. Sembcorp, which agreed in 2006 to take a 40 per cent stake in the Fujairah plant, said on 9 March that it had not been damaged.
About three-quarters of these plants generate electricity as well.
Older thermal desalination plants sit beside power stations and use their waste heat to heat seawater. This is an efficient arrangement, but damage to the associated power plants or grid connections could interrupt water production. Newer plants force seawater through membranes at high pressure. They consume less energy, but depend on grid continuity. Damage to high-pressure pumps could disable production and potentially take weeks to repair.
In both configurations, the dependency is the same. For plants inside the Gulf, water output is tied to the same fuel, grid and shipping lanes as the energy sector. Here, a power failure can therefore become a water failure.
A city that loses its plants retains only what it has stored.
A city on a river that loses its treatment works still has the river; its immediate problem is to repair the works. For drinking water, a city that depends on desalination has no equivalent source. If it loses its plants, it has only the water already in its reservoirs. Storage on this coast is measured by a single interval: the time between a halt in production and the failure of supply.
That interval governs everything that follows. It determines how long a repair may take, how far water can be moved by road, and whether rationing is a precaution or the final measure.
Interactive: choose a step, or use the arrows, to change the figure
Kahramaa’s own count put Qatar’s water reserve at 1.3 days in 2010, some thirty hours of supply had production stopped; by 2024 it reported 5.2 days.
About four days if the desalination plants are shut down, as reported by the government. Bahrain’s interior ministry counts 103 desalination plants; they produced some 0.3 billion cubic metres in 2023.
Liwa holds its reserve in the aquifer; Gulf News reports that the water cannot be stored above ground because of contamination and other factors. Up to 90 days for one million people at 180 litres a day.
The interior minister put the strategic reserve at about four months in March 2026. Kahramaa’s own measure, a different basis, had risen from 1.3 days in 2010 to 5.2 in 2024.
Notes
Figures as reported by utilities and governments. They rest on different assumptions about normal demand and emergency rationing and are not directly comparable.
The sea that supplies the Gulf supplies Iran as well.
Article 54 of the first Additional Protocol 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.
More than 90 per cent of Iran’s desalination plants are in its southern provinces, most of them on the same body of water, which takes about 1.7 years to flush through Hormuz. A large oil slick could reach intakes on both coasts.
Several states on the coast have invested in storage. Qatar built surface storage, Abu Dhabi banked water in an aquifer, Kuwait has six underground reservoirs in planning, and Saudi Arabia retains its Red Sea capacity. The first phase of the electricity grid, linking Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, became operational in 2009, and the UAE link in 2011. A shared water grid remained only a feasibility study in mid-2026. The result is national resilience without regional redundancy, leaving the smallest systems the most exposed.
Both shores depend on the same sea
Notes
Share of the world’s desalination capacity in the six Gulf states in 2022, against the share of Iran’s desalination plants sited in its southern provinces. Different measures, mostly one body of water.
Images: Gulf at night, NASA/ISS (public domain); Ras Laffan © Matthew Smith (CC BY 2.0); Kuwait oil fires, 1991, U.S. Navy, Lt. Steve Gozzo (public domain); Doha West Bay © Nmnogueira (CC BY-SA 4.0). Via Wikimedia Commons.
Sources
46 references
Storage figures are as reported by utilities and governments and are not directly comparable. Published widths for the Strait of Hormuz differ: the EIA gives 21 miles, the IEA 29 nautical miles. Most 2026 strikes on water facilities were attributed by one party and denied or unconfirmed by the other; independent verification has been limited.
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Every figure and claim in this story rests on the references above. The stories list them here rather than marking them in the text; the country reports and hubs keep their inline markers.