Trump Threatens Iran's Water

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1:36Here today, roam tomorrow. Join now at Sonesta.com. Terms and conditions apply. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. A month into the Iran war, the costs are mounting. And the Trump administration continues to send mixed messages about when and how the war will end. Gas prices in the U.S. climbed above an average of$4 a gallon on Monday, for the first time since August of 2022. Jet fuel has surged. And in a post on Truth Social this morning, President Trump suggested countries facing shortages buy oil from the United States. or, quote, build up some delayed courage, go to the strait and just take it.

2:24The Post comes amid reporting from the Wall Street Journal that the president has told aides he's willing to end the war, even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed. And U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said today that diplomatic talks with Iran are ongoing. We would much prefer to get a deal. If Iran was willing to relinquish material they have and ambitions they have, Open this. Great. That's the goal. Hexath said he thought the talks were, quote, gaining strength, but that the U.S. would continue its strikes if a deal isn't reached. We don't want to have to do more militarily than we have to.

3:00But I didn't mean it flippantly when I said, in the meantime, we'll negotiate with bombs. The flurry of headlines on Tuesday comes on the heels of another threat the president made against Iran on Monday. He posted on Truth Social that if the Iranian regime fails to reach a deal shortly, the United States would obliterate all of Iran's electric generating plants, oil wells, Karg Island, where most of Iran's oil is processed for shipping, and possibly all of the country's desalination plants. It's an extraordinary threat. In truth, Iran's reaction to that is likely to cause more problems when it comes to desalination plants.

3:38Peter Martin covers defense policy and intelligence for Bloomberg. He says desalination infrastructure is critical to the countries of the Gulf. Tens of millions of people across the region are dependent on the desalinization process. An American president threatening to destroy desalination plants is unprecedented. And if it happened, it could be a violation of international law. It could spark a humanitarian crisis. I think it's fair to say that it's something that no other president within living memory would have done. But that's been true of a lot of Trump's actions so far. You know, successive U.S.

4:18administrations have talked about whether or not military action against Iran could work and have decided ultimately that it wouldn't. The costs would be too high. President Trump has made a different calculation. And so I think it would be naive to suggest that he might not also take surprising and controversial steps in this case, too.

4:43I'm Sarah Holder, and this is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, we look at the vital yet vulnerable infrastructure that makes life possible in the Middle East. and what would happen if desalination plants become targets in the war with Iran.

5:04The countries that ring the western side of the Persian Gulf, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, are among the most water-scarce countries in the world. And as a result of that, countries across the region are reliant on desalination to obtain drinking water and other water for commercial and industrial uses. To sort of put it in context a little bit, around 40 % of the water that is used by the UAE comes from desalination, about 70 % for Saudi Arabia, and actually 90 % for Kuwait. So it's absolutely crucial to civilian and industrial life. Across the Persian Gulf, what are the alternatives to desalination?

5:51What other water sources are there? There's very limited freshwater in the Gulf. There are river sources. Some countries hold underground reserves, which have enough water for a few days or a week. But really, there is no alternative in most of the Gulf countries. So, Peter, let's get a sense of the history of this technology in the Gulf. What was it like there before desalination? And when did the first desalination plants come online? Yeah, I mean, the technique has been around for millennia. It's just a basic, basically, it's the process of removing salt from seawater and making that water drinkable.

6:31There were sort of two techniques which dominated for a long time. One was thermal desalination, which I can remember being shown as a kid in elementary school, which is where you heat water, steam evaporates, and then you capture the steam. And there's another process called reverse osmosis, which is now the dominant technology and the one that's spread all across the Middle East, which is where you use pressure to push seawater through a membrane and you remove the salt from it. So basically, before the advent of this technology and its widespread use, there's no way that Gulf countries could have supported the kinds of populations that they have now.

7:13I think all of the Gulf countries are incredibly dependent on the technology. And without it, they wouldn't have the kind of tourism, service, financial industries that you see today. How reliant is desalination infrastructure on other kinds of infrastructure like energy and oil infrastructure, which was also talked about in Trump's Truth Social post as a potential target in this war? Yeah, so desalination plants have a kind of symbiotic relationship with energy and power plants. The pressure that's required to push water through those filtration membranes and to remove the salt from the water is incredibly energy intensive.

7:52So they're often built next to power plants. That makes them very expensive. Some estimates I've heard put desalinated water at about 25 times more expensive than other sources around most of the world. But in the Gulf, the region has a huge advantage in that it's endowed with massive amounts of oil and other hydrocarbons bringing down some of those costs. So, Peter, I mean, you laid out how many people across the Gulf states depend on desalination. But this problem isn't limited to the Gulf, right? Other countries in the Middle East also depend on this technology, including Israel, which is an active party in this war.

8:30Israel gets about 70 % of its water from desalination plants. So how vulnerable is all of this infrastructure in the Gulf, in Israel, to being damaged in this war? Yeah, I mean, the infrastructure is vulnerable across the entire region. Israel has excellent air defenses compared to many of its neighbors. It also has alternative sources of water. There's a major lake that it relies on. And it's worked for decades, really, to reduce its vulnerability to water scarcity. So if a desalination plant were to be taken offline in Israel, it would be a problem, but not a catastrophe in the same way that it might be for, say, Kuwait.

9:14And I feel like this has all been building to the question of Iran. Can you walk through how dependent Iran is on desalination and on desalination infrastructure? Iran is not particularly dependent on it. It has disalination plants and it would be disruptive to take them offline. The country has suffered from drought in recent months. But now as we head to the springtime, there's access to fresh water from rain. Iran has multiple rivers. And so I don't think that it's an existential threat to rulers in Tehran in the same way as it is to its Arab Gulf neighbors. But if President Trump does follow through on his threat to possibly destroy Iran's desalination infrastructure, it could trigger a dangerous chain reaction.

10:05And it wouldn't be the first time a desalination plant in the Gulf had been targeted in war. After the break, we'll look at exactly what the human and economic costs could be if it happened again.

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13:27Why are desalination plants attractive targets for military action? Why have they become targets before? In theoretical terms, they're large fixed targets that are easy to locate. They're difficult to replace quickly. They can put tremendous stress on any government that's reliant on that technology if you remove it because your civilian population is then put at risk. It has happened before. During the first Gulf War, Iraq targeted Kuwait's desalination plants, taking some of them offline. But in truth, they have rarely been targeted. The Geneva Convention makes it clear that it's illegal to target them because they're necessary for civilians to survive.

14:18So, you know, they're relatively easy, large targets that are simple to hit. It's just that the legality of that is very problematic. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you mentioned the Kuwait attack. What does the fallout from that tell us about the stakes of potential strikes on desalination plants in this war? Yeah, Iraq targeted some of Kuwait's desalination plants in the first Gulf War, taking some of them offline and reducing the access of Kuwait's population to drinking water. Suppliers were then brought in from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries and that the U.S. also helped with some of that response.

14:57But in truth, you know, it's difficult to maintain reserves for large civilian populations for long periods of time. And if a plant like this is attacked, how long could it take to get back online? Yeah, so experts I've spoken to say that, you know, minor damage could be repaired in months, perhaps weeks, but the larger scale damage would require years to repair. What happens if water begins to run out and these countries see shortages? What are the humanitarian implications of that? Yeah. So, I mean, the most immediate result would be that households would begin to run short on water. And that could happen within a matter of days.

15:38Typically, governments, you would expect them to start doing things like rationing water use, restricting commercial use, perhaps distributing bottled water to populations. And if it were to persist for a long time, I think that probably evacuations would be considered. And from an economic standpoint, which parts of these Gulf states' economies are most vulnerable, again, if a plant like this were to be taken out or even damaged? If you think of somewhere like Dubai with a massive urban population, an economy which runs on services, finance, tourism, the life of the population there would be very difficult to sustain.

16:20All of the industry surrounding it would be difficult to sustain. Essentially, these economies would come grinding to a halt without the ability to obtain the water that they need. Given the extremely high stakes of keeping these desalination plants running, I'm wondering what Gulf countries are doing to protect their water supplies and their manufacturing facilities right now and how well those efforts have been working. Experts that I've spoken to say that there's not really very much that they can do to protect the facilities. They're large, they're exposed, they're quite technically fragile.

16:56There's a lot of sensitive technology inside. And, you know, the countries themselves are protected by air defences. Most of the Gulf states have a pretty good record of shooting down incoming Iranian missiles and drones. But it's not a perfect record. Lots is still getting through. And there's not really much that can be done to harden them in the short term other than just trying to shoot down missiles and drones. Striking desalination plants would be a violation of the Geneva Convention. It's a war crime. What would the consequences be if a country or a government like the U.S. did target desalination plants in this war?

17:38I think the truth is that we don't know. We'd be entering uncharted territory. From the outset, this war has been questioned by some of the U.S.'s closest allies when it comes to whether or not American actions have been legal. U.S. strikes on desalination plants would certainly invite that kind of questioning, as would Iranian retaliation. But, you know, I think a lot of people feel like we've got to a point here where we're kind of at outrage fatigue. I'm not sure what would happen in practical terms other than a huge international outcry. Are there risks that even accidentally or as a symptom of this broader conflict in the Middle East that desalination plants might be damaged, whether through strikes from Iran, the US or other regional players?

18:35And what are the implications of that? Yeah, there's absolutely that risk. If energy facilities were to be targeted, there's the potential that that damage could take desalination plants offline because they're so energy intensive. And there's also, of course, the possibility of collateral damage. trust on both sides in this war is running pretty low at the moment. And so it would be quite difficult for either side to convince the other that that kind of damage had been accidental. And that raises the possibility of escalation quite considerably. Well, we've already seen one example of a desalination plant being damaged in this conflict.

19:13The Iranian government has said that a desalination plant was damaged on Qesem Island in the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting the water supply to 30 villages. How did Iran and the U.S. respond to that incident? And how much does this raise the risk of future attacks on desalination plants in this war? I think a lot depends on whether President Trump goes through with his most recent threats. Iran said that its facility had been hit in early March. The US responded by saying that the facility was not deliberately targeted and exactly what happens kind of remains in dispute. But Iran did retaliate by hitting a facility in the Gulf state of Bahrain and saying subsequently that any further attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure could be met by attacks on Gulf desalination facilities.

20:09So I think it's something that both sides have kind of put in play. But so far on the ground, there's been a reasonable degree of restraint between both sides, precisely, I think, because the humanitarian consequences would be so grave. And the reputational cost to either side for actually carrying out activities, which is so crucial to civilian life, would be pretty high.

20:38This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access to all of Bloomberg.com, subscribe today at Bloomberg.com slash podcast offer. If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

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