“Your editorial "Trump's Iran Target List, Good and Bad" (March 31) is exactly right to single out desalination plants as targets that must be kept off the list, and the warning can't be overstated.
The Persian Gulf is now home to the largest concentration of desalination capacity on earth, producing roughly 40% of the world's desalinated water. The numbers tell a stark story of existential dependence: Saudi Arabia derives 60% of its potable water from desalination; Kuwait, almost 90%; Bahrain, 88%; the United Arab Emirates, 42%; and Qatar, host to the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, relies on desalination for more than 99% of its drinking water. None of these countries maintains more than a few days' reserve storage. These are not incidental civilian facilities. They are lifelines.
Here lies the strategic irony that Mr. Trump's advisers must grasp: Iran's Arab Gulf neighbors -- America's indispensable regional allies in any confrontation with Tehran -- live in desalination glass houses. Any military exchange that targets desalination infrastructure, Iranian or otherwise, risks triggering a catastrophic escalatory cycle in which those allies would bear the brunt of the repercussions.
As Winston Churchill observed, "the statesman who yields to war fever is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events malignant fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations."
Destroying Iran's power and desalination plants would neither restore control nor improve fortune and subjugate the regime. It would hand it a propaganda victory, create a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions and destabilize the regional partners upon whom any post-conflict order depends.
Prof. Najmedin Meshkati
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Los Angeles” [1]
1. Blitz Iran's Water Infrastructure, Lose the War. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 08 Apr 2026: A14.
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