Will the Iran war really threaten the desalination projects in the Gulf region?

Despite the media hype, the Iran war is unlikely to noticeably impact water supply without a significant and dangerous shift in military strategy, writes GWI Middle East editor Ed Cullinane.

After nearly two weeks of fighting in the Gulf between Iran and nearly everyone else, media attention has suddenly shifted towards the threat to water supply following a number of accidental and/or intentional strikes against desalination facilities on both sides. 

Early last week, NASA’s Fire Information Resource Management System (FIRMS) indicated the outbreak of a fire at the UAE’s Fujairah 1 IWPP, while debris from an intercepted Shahed drone landed on Kuwait’s Doha West seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant. GWI has since confirmed that the Fujairah 1 IWPP was not affected by the strike and continues to operate normally.  

This week, language escalated after Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi accused the US-Israeli coalition of targeting a desalination plant on the island of Qeshm, which sits astride the Straits of Hormuz. The facility, which Araghchi said supplies 30 villages, is believed by GWI’s DesalData to be one of the two larger plants in the island's North East, possibly the 10,000m3/d QUC plant  – though this remains unconfirmed. 

On Sunday, Bahrain's Interior Ministry accused Iran of damaging a desalination plant - which some unconfirmed reports indicated may have been one of the two independent water and power projects (IWPPs) located at Ad Dur. With a national desalination capacity of 967,450m3/d, damage to either facility would represent a significant impact on water supply in the island country. However, the Interior Ministry has not confirmed the extent of the damage.

Despite both reports though, there is little reason to believe that either Iran or the US-Israeli coalition are intentionally targeting desalination facilities – which international law would regard as a war crime. Further, while both sides have demonstrated the ability to strike these facilities, plants affected by the conflict so far have either been landed on by falling debris or are positioned nearby alternative high-value targets, including ports and oil infrastructure.  

A wide selection of targets

While there is no less risk to plants in the Gulf than any of the LNG or oil terminals currently being hit by Iranian drones, the sheer number of desalination plants in the Gulf mitigates any serious loss of water supply - meaning only a serious campaign against desalination plants would threaten supply. Red triangles indicate strikes against facilities, as confirmed by national governments. Orange triangles indicate alleged damage or instances of falling debris affecting known facilities.

Source: DesalData

Shows operational desalination plants with a capacity of 10,000m3/d or above.

If Iran or the coalition did intentionally seek to destroy desalination infrastructure, both sides have the capacity to do so. This has been demonstrated by strikes against Qatari LNG and Bahraini oil storage facilities, and is self-evident with US air supremacy. As largely linear facilities, a strike against a desalination plant's high-pressure pump, intake, energy connection or even membrane buildings would likely disable it. This would require rebuilding or repair, which could take hours or weeks depending on the scale of damage.  

In the past, there have also been efforts to sabotage desalination infrastructure in war by less direct means. In the Gulf War (1990-91) Saddam Hussein deliberately released millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf in order to disrupt the water intake of Saudi desal plants. Today, if repeated, SWRO plants would struggle to handle this, more so than the thermal plants used in the Kingdom in the 90’s as the oil would clog up membranes and pumps. 

What this tells us is that, in theory, there is reason to be aware of the military danger posed to these facilities. Being so dependent on desalinated water, some Gulf states are exposed to potential loss of that supply through direct strikes. Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar in particular do not have sufficient storage capacity that would hedge against the loss of production capacity.  

The story in Saudi Arabia and the UAE though is very different. Despite a widely-cited 2008 US diplomatic report highlighting Riyadh’s heavy dependence on water from desalination at Jubail, the Kingdom’s capital has now spread its water supply to multiple facilities. According to the Kingdom's Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture (MEWA) the urban water supply mix of Saudi Arabia is now 78.37% desalinated water, showing that it does have exposure to a sudden loss of desalination capacity, but this is spread over nine major and dozens of minor plants across the Gulf and Red Sea.

Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Dubai have also made efforts to store water using aquifer storage and recovery (ASR), providing alternative sources of water. Similarly, the Riyadh region maintains strategic reservoirs with a capacity of 7.8 million m3 – with plans to substantially expand that in the coming years. It must also be noted that even in the smaller emirates of the UAE, water supply via desalination is supplied by a large number of plants – often dozens – mitigating the risk of failure of any one facility. In the worst instance, water could also be transported via trucks if piped connection was not available. 

Desalination plants cannot inherently be better reinforced than any other large piece of infrastructure struck in this war so far. They are open-air, multi-layered sites that often sit on the coast; and therefore will always be one of the first targets that an Iranian drone or a US aircraft will see in the conflict. I’ve been asked repeatedly this week what could be done to reinforce that vulnerability – and the answer is simple; buy more interceptors. 

While the smaller states may now look to safeguard their water supply through their own storage projects, or may look towards developing a regionally connected grid with their neighbors, it’s clear therefore that the threat to desalination in the Gulf is small. Without a dramatic change in their approach to the conflict to intentionally hit desalination plants, it is very unlikely that any Gulf state will be exposed to serious danger of water supply loss. 

For me, the real question in the war is not how exposed Dubai or Abu Dhabi are to water loss – but how endangered Iran will be by a drought this coming summer. After decades of missed investment, talk of evacuating Tehran last summer due to water scarcity, and now the double-strike of war and economic collapse – how will the new Iranian regime resolve this far greater crisis? 

Who relies the most on desal in the Gulf?

While the headline numbers for dependence on desalination in the purely urban water mix Gulf look far more serious, the role of desalination in the total water mix of most Gulf countries is not as significant when including agriculture - except in the smaller Emirates.