Water treatment centres in the Persian Gulf region are under threat amid the Iran war, with desalination plants in areas like Bahrain taking damage from strikes and threatening the local water supply.
Unlike attacks on military bases, personnel and equipment, attacks on energy and especially civilian infrastructure are a new front line in the war, which at least one expert says crosses a red line.
โItโs alarming that these types of infrastructure are targeted,โ says Mohammed Mahmoud, lead for Middle East climate and water policy at the United Nations University Institute of Water, Environment and Health.
โIt is a red line in a sea of red lines, unfortunately, that happens during war, attacking civilian infrastructure like water infrastructure, because it directly has an impact on civilian populations to survive, and to me, thatโs concerning.โ
On March 8, Bahrain accused Iran of indiscriminately attacking civilian targets and damaging one of its desalination plants, though it didnโt say supplies had gone offline.
The island nation, home to the U.S. Navyโs Fifth Fleet, has been among the countries targeted by Iranian drones and missiles.
Earlier, Iran said a U.S. airstrike damaged an Iranianย desalinationย plant.
Abbas Araghchi, Iranโs foreign minister, said the strike on Iranโs plant had cut into the water supply for 30 villages. He warned that in doing so โthe U.S. set this precedent, not Iran.โ
Many Gulf desalination plants are physically integrated with power stations as cogeneration facilities, meaning attacks on electrical infrastructure could also hinder water production.
Desalination involves removing salt from seawater, which gets processed into clean drinking water and is used among the majority of Persian Gulf nations as the primary water source.
These desalination plants use a process known as reverse osmosis.
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Jay Warber, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto, describes the process as a โmembrane-based techniqueโ where water is forced through a special polymer material, and tiny pores filter out salt and other impurities.
โIf you go inside one of these desalination plants, youโll just see rows upon rows of what are called pressure vessels, and these are big plastic tubes that are pressurized to tens of atmospheres of pressure, and inside of those you have these membranes all rolled up, and itโs just rows upon rows because these things are big water factories,โ says Warber.
โThey produce a huge amount of water, often from seawater, but also from other salty waters that you can find, groundwater and river water.โ
To create the pressure needed to pump water through these facilities, Warber says a great amount of energy is required. This means even a strike on energy infrastructure could indirectly impact a desalination plant.
Why attack a desalination plant?
Mahmoud says beyond being used for drinking, desalination at these facilities means cities have water that can be used for agriculture, industry, sanitation and health care.
โThe Gulf states, particularly, really have no other reliable source of water supply. They donโt have renewable fresh water. What I mean by that, they donโt have a system of rivers and streams that other countries can use and rely on for their water resource needs,โ says Mahmoud.
โImpact to those plants has huge, huge, huge detrimental consequences because of how much water feeds into so many other things. Thereโs huge, huge cascading effects if those plants go offline.โ
Striking water treatment plants means Iran is not only fighting back with military force, but also targeting other nationsโ civilian infrastructure, which puts local populations at serious risk.
Itโs part of a larger pattern of Iranian responses targeting neighbouring infrastructure and interests in the region.
Iran has attacked energy infrastructure targets in the Gulf region and blocked the Strait of Hormuz by threatening any vessels that attempt to pass through the narrow chokepoint.
Limiting cargo and oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz has led to skyrocketing global oil and gas prices and knock-on effects to economies beyond the Middle East and even in Canada.
Higher oil prices and shipping volatility can mean strains to supply chains and accelerate inflation, which means consumers will wind up paying higher prices as a result of the war.
Those attacks on infrastructure like desalination plants have been largely from direct strikes causing physical damage, but there are also potential risks to their digital systems.
Are Canada’s water systems secure?
Canadaโs Cyber Security Centre on March 9 warned of Iranโs risk of cyber attacks on infrastructure and other targets in Canada in response to the Iran war, and as allies of the U.S. and Israel are under attack regardless of direct involvement or not.
โCanadian critical infrastructure operators and other possible targeted entities should remain vigilant to threats posed by cyber actors aligned with Iranian interests,โ said the Canadian Cyber Security Centre on Monday in a bulletin.
It added: โIranian state-sponsored cyber threat actors opportunistically target poorly secured critical infrastructure (CI) networks and internet-connected devices around the world, including those associated with the water and energy sectors.โ
A separate bulletin from the Cyber Security Centre posted in November 2025 also warned about Canadaโs water systems being at high risk of potential cyber attacks.
โWe assess that water systems are almost certainly a strategic target for state-sponsored actors to project power through disruptive or destructive cyber threat activity,โ said the Cyber Security Centre.
โWe assess that state-sponsored actors have almost certainly developed pre-positioned access to Canadian water systems. However, we judge that these actors would likely only disrupt those water systems in times of crisis or conflict between states.โ
When asked for his thoughts on this, Mahmoud says water treatment facilities in the Persian Gulf could โabsolutelyโ be vulnerable to a cyber attack.
โA lot of the water infrastructure and operations, water deliveries, transmission, a lot of that is absolutely automated in terms of how those plants and technologies operate. And so absolutely, a cyber attack could be one way to inflict damage in the sense of taking plants offline,โ he says, and adds that ultimately a direct physical impact would do more and lasting damage to these facilities.
Mahmoud continued: โThe other alarming part for me personally, with the work that I do, is now weโre moving from military targets towards civilian infrastructure. That has no, in my opinion, military value.โ
โ With files from The Associated Press
