What Trump's threat against Iran's desalination plants means for Mideast U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to target Iran’s energy infrastructure, including its desalination plants. If that threat is carried out, and if Iran retaliates and targeting the plants of its Gulf Arab neighbors, the move could have devastating impacts across the water-starved Middle East. Live updates: Trump says US is negotiating with Iran’s parliamentary speaker, who denies talksThe Afternoon WireThe birthright citizenship case at the Supreme Court hits close to home for this immigrant motherMullins Madness! Freshman's 35-footer gives UConn a 73-72 win over Duke and a Final Four spotMary Beth Hurt, Tony-nominated Broadway and film actor, dies at 79Apollo's impatient old-timers are rooting for NASA's return to the moon with Artemis II launchA red fox stows away on a cargo ship, traveling from England to the USMore women are having babies later in life. 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How to improve your chance of a healthy pregnancyJury finds Instagram and YouTube liable in a landmark social media addiction trialDo-it-yourself projects can save money and build confidence, or do the oppositeIsraeli police prevent Catholic leaders from celebrating Palm Sunday Mass at Jerusalem churchEl papa León XIV rechaza en Domingo de Ramos las afirmaciones de que Dios justifica la guerraClimateTwo women from the Iranian Red Crescent Society stand as a thick plume of smoke from a U.S.-Israeli strike on an oil storage facility late Saturday rises into the sky in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 8, 2026. A man rides a bike as fires and plumes of smoke rise after debris from an intercepted Iranian drone struck an oil facility, according to authorities, in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, March 14, 2026. Workers walk in an area at a degassing station in Zubair oil field, whose operations have being reduced due to the Mideast war triggered by the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, near Basra, Iraq, March 28, 2026. Two women from the Iranian Red Crescent Society stand as a thick plume of smoke from a U.S.-Israeli strike on an oil storage facility late Saturday rises into the sky in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 8, 2026. Two women from the Iranian Red Crescent Society stand as a thick plume of smoke from a U.S.-Israeli strike on an oil storage facility late Saturday rises into the sky in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 8, 2026. A man rides a bike as fires and plumes of smoke rise after debris from an intercepted Iranian drone struck an oil facility, according to authorities, in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, March 14, 2026. A man rides a bike as fires and plumes of smoke rise after debris from an intercepted Iranian drone struck an oil facility, according to authorities, in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, March 14, 2026. Workers walk in an area at a degassing station in Zubair oil field, whose operations have being reduced due to the Mideast war triggered by the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, near Basra, Iraq, March 28, 2026. Workers walk in an area at a degassing station in Zubair oil field, whose operations have being reduced due to the Mideast war triggered by the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, near Basra, Iraq, March 28, 2026. . Such a move — and Iran’s possible targeting of the plants of its Gulf Arab neighbors — could have devastating impacts across the water-starved Middle East.Strait of Hormuz , where much oil passes via tankers, is not immediately reopened, “we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island , which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.’” The biggest danger, analysts warn, may not be what Trump could do to Iran, but how Tehran could retaliate. Iran relies on desalination for a small share of its water supply while Gulf Arab states depend on it for the vast majority. Hundreds of desalination plants sit along the Persian Gulf coast, putting individual systems that supply water to millions within range of Iranian missile or drone strikes. Without them, major cities — such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates or Doha, Qatar’s capital — could not sustain their current populations. “Desalination facilities are oftentimes necessary for the survival of the civilian population and intentional destruction of those types of facilities is a war crime,” said Niku Jafarnia, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.After a fifth year of extreme drought, some Iranian media reports say reservoirs supplying Tehran, the country’s capital, are below 10% capacity. Satellitealso show reservoirs noticeably depleted. The country still draws most of its water from rivers, reservoirs and depleted underground aquifers. Israeli airstrikes on March 7 on oil depots surrounding Tehran produced heavy smoke and acid rain. Experts warned the fallout could contaminate soil and parts of the city’s water supply. “Attacking water facilities, even one, could end up being harmful to the population in such a severe water scarcity context,” Jafarnia said.on Feb. 28, Iran had been racing to expand desalination along its southern coast and pump some of the water inland, but infrastructure constraints, energy costs and international sanctions have sharply limited scalability.In Kuwait, about 90% of drinking water comes from desalination, along with roughly 86% in Oman and about 70% in Saudi Arabia. The technology removes salt from seawater — most commonly by pushing it through ultrafine membranes in a process known as— to produce the freshwater that sustains cities, hotels, industry and some agriculture across one of the world’s driest regions. Even where the plants are connected to national grids with backup supply routes, disruptions can cascade across interconnected systems, said David Michel, senior fellow for water security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s an asymmetrical tactic,” he said. “Iran doesn’t have the same capacity to strike back ... But it does have this possibility to impose costs on the Gulf countries to push them to intervene or call for a cessation of hostilities.”have multiple stages — intake systems, treatment facilities, energy supplies — and damage to any part of that chain can interrupt production, according to Ed Cullinane, Mideast editor at Global Water Intelligence, a publisher serving the water industry. “None of these assets are any more protected than any of the municipal areas that are currently being hit by ballistic missiles or drones,” Cullinane said. The Gulf produces about a third of the world’s crude exports and energy revenues underpin national economies. Fighting has already halted tanker traffic through key shipping routes and disrupted port activity, forcing some producers to curb exports as storage tanks fill. “Everyone thinks of Saudi Arabia and their neighbors as petrostates. But I call them saltwater kingdoms. They’re human-made fossil-fueled water superpowers,” said Michael Christopher Low, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. “It’s both a monumental achievement of the 20th century and a certain kind of vulnerability.” Trump’s comments came as the conflict intensified, with Tehran striking a key water and electrical plant in Kuwait and an oil refinery in Israel coming under attack, while U.S. and Israeli forces launched a new wave of strikes on Iran.A 2010 CIA analysis warned that attacks on desalination facilities could trigger national crises in several Gulf states, and prolonged outages could last months if critical equipment were destroyed. More than 90% of the Gulf’s desalinated water comes from just 56 plants, the report stated, and “each of these critical plants is extremely vulnerable to sabotage or military action.” Saudi Arabia and the UAE have invested in pipeline networks, storage reservoirs and other redundancies designed to cushion short-term disruptions. But smaller states such as Bahrain, Desalination has expanded in part because climate change is intensifying drought across the region. The plants themselves are highly energy-intensive and emit massive amounts of carbon, while their coastal locations make them vulnerable to extreme weather and rising seas.During Iraq’s 1990-1991 invasion of Kuwait, retreating Iraqi forces sabotaged power stations and desalination facilities, said Low, from the University of Utah, while millions of barrels of crude oil were deliberately released into the Persian Gulf, which threatened seawater intake pipes used by desalination plants across the region. Workers rushed to deploy protective booms around the intake valves of major facilities but the destruction left Kuwait largely without fresh water and dependent on emergency water imports. Full recovery took years. In recent years, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have targeted Saudi desalination facilities as tensions escalated. International humanitarian law, including provisions of the Geneva Conventions, prohibit targeting civilian infrastructure indispensable to the survival of the population, including drinking water facilities.The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visitHammerschlag is a text and visual journalist covering the intersection of oceans and climate change globally for The Associated Press. She is based in Seattle.400