Water instead of oil: how a new front in the war with Iran could impact the entire Gulf

In the Middle East, it has long been considered that the main nerve of any major war is oil. Tanker, strait, export, barrel price, market pressure. All of this is still important, but now another, much more alarming contour is emerging in the regional picture: water.

And if the current US and Israeli war against Iran expands, it is water that may become the resource targeted not for symbolism, but for panic, pressure on Washington’s allies, and destabilizing the rear of the wealthy monarchies of the Persian Gulf. This threat is described very clearly: in a region where there is almost no fresh water, the very infrastructure of survival can turn into a weapon.

For the Israeli audience, this topic does not seem distant or theoretical. When it comes to war with Iran, the issue has long been not just about missiles, drones, and the nuclear program. It’s about how Tehran knows how to find weak spots—not always the loudest, but the most painful. And the Gulf’s water infrastructure is precisely one of those.

The Persian Gulf lives on desalination—and therein lies its weakness.

Here, numbers speak louder than any rhetoric.

The Persian Gulf has only about 2% of the world’s renewable fresh water reserves. Meanwhile, the region’s dependence on desalination has long become not just high, but systemic. In Kuwait, about 90% of water comes from desalination, in Oman—86%, in Saudi Arabia—70%, in the UAE—42%. And the total volume of desalination plants in the Gulf’s waters in 2021 exceeded 20 million cubic meters per day—equivalent to about 8,000 Olympic swimming pools daily.

Thus, a strike on water in this region is not a secondary episode. It is a blow to everyday life, energy, logistics, food, and the sense of basic security. Because desalinated water is needed not only by households. Agriculture, food production, part of the industry, and the very stability of cities that have grown under extremely limited natural resources depend on it.

Why water can become a tool of pressure

Oil has a global market. There are reserves, routes, insurance, political compensation mechanisms. With water, it’s cruder. It cannot be quickly replaced with headlines or futures.

And that is why some analysts are already considering water infrastructure as a potential fault line in the current war. The logic is simple: if Gulf countries feel that not only ports and bases are under threat, but also desalination capacities, the pressure on the US to quickly stop the war will sharply increase. Attacks in such logic work to create panic and to make civilians simply leave the region.

This is the very ‘horizontal escalation’ that is increasingly being talked about in relation to Iran. It’s not necessary to hit the main target directly. Sometimes it’s more effective to show that you can reach the infrastructure without which normal life simply falls apart.

Iran is already sending signals—and they are read too clearly.

For now, it’s more about alarming signals than a full-scale campaign against water. But it is precisely signals in such wars that work best.

There are mentions of Bahrain’s accusations of a direct Iranian strike on a desalination plant. Iran, in turn, claims that a prior American strike damaged a water treatment facility on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz. Additionally, attacks in the area of the Jebel Ali port in Dubai occurred near one of the world’s largest desalination plants; there were also reports of a fire near the Fujairah F1 water supply and power station in the UAE, although it officially continued to operate. In Kuwait, according to reports, the Doha West power station was also affected—albeit indirectly, through nearby strikes or falling debris.

This no longer looks like a random periphery of the war.

It looks like a demonstration of capabilities.

Tehran tries not to cross the line, but wants fear to already work.

Here, another detail is especially important. Where the real vulnerability of the Gulf is described, a caveat is made: direct and overt targeted destruction of desalination facilities does not yet seem the most likely scenario.

Iran is being cautious.

Largely because strikes on civilian infrastructure too easily turn into a legal and political problem. That is why Tehran tries to present its actions as retaliatory, as a form of retribution, rather than as an open strike on a vital civilian system. Simply put: threatening is profitable; transitioning to a mode of absolutely obvious water terror is still more dangerous.

But this does not make the situation calmer. On the contrary. Because the threat remains in a suspended state and works as leverage. Iran shows that it understands the value of this target and can return to it at any moment.

It is here that NAnovosti—Israel News | Nikk.Agency sees the most unpleasant conclusion for Israel and its allies: the war is increasingly moving away from the familiar map of ‘bases, missiles, oil’ and entering a zone where everyday life itself becomes a vulnerability. And this is already a different depth of pressure.

The paradox is that Iran itself is also suffocating from the water crisis.

And here begins the most ironic and darkest twist of the whole story.

Iran itself is extremely vulnerable in terms of water. And not because of the last weeks of war, but long before them. The country has already approached ‘absolute water scarcity.’ Among the reasons are low rainfall, the emergency state of old water infrastructure, years of management failures, excessive dam construction, water-intensive agriculture, and depletion of groundwater. The main aquifers in the country are half-empty, rivers are shrinking, Lake Urmia is sharply decreasing, and in some areas, serious ground subsidence is occurring due to water extraction. Officials have already warned that one day Tehran may even face water rationing or partial evacuation.

Before the current war, water scarcity was already fueling internal protests in Iran—in Khuzestan, Isfahan, and other regions. So for the regime, this is not an abstract environmental issue, but a factor of internal stability. And in this paradox: a country that can threaten someone else’s water stands on a very fragile water foundation itself.

What this means for Israel

This means that the water factor in the current war cannot be viewed as an exotic topic from environmental reports. It has already entered the sphere of national security.

If pressure on the Gulf’s desalination infrastructure increases, US regional allies will be forced to think not only about a military response but also about social resilience, internal panic, and the ability to maintain normal life. And if retaliatory strikes affect Iranian water nodes, this could add instability within Iran itself.

Future conflicts in the Middle East may well be determined not only by pipelines and tankers but also by rivers, dams, aquifers, and desalination plants. And in this sense, water indeed begins to be worth more than oil—not on the stock exchange, but in the logic of survival.

For Israel, this is bad news, but useful clarity. A new front is already visible. And it runs not only through the sky and not only through the map of nuclear facilities.

It runs through water.