00:00Well, to get further insight on this, we can speak now to Associate Professor of History and Director of the
00:05Middle East Centre at the University of Utah, Mr. Michael Lowe.
00:08Mr. Lowe, I know you have a book that is soon to be published called Saltwater Kingdoms, which outlines the
00:13major role of desalination plants in the region.
00:16Do you think they're becoming somewhat the main bargaining chip almost in this war?
00:22Yes. I mean, unfortunately, they've sort of climbed to the top of the escalation ladder, in particular for Iran.
00:30They understand the sort of vital nature of these facilities for their Gulf neighbours.
00:36I think one of the things that is most upsetting and disappointing about the comments that President Donald Trump made
00:43is that Iran really only relies on desalination for about 3 percent of its water.
00:49So it's not nearly the same sort of existential risk for Iran that it is for the other Gulf states.
00:57Indeed, some of the Gulf states, I believe, 99 percent of drinking water in Qatar, 70 percent of drinking water
01:04in Saudi Arabia comes from these desalination plants.
01:07So how dangerous are things getting on that level for people in the region?
01:13I mean, I think for them, this is actually so if we look at the sort of main things that
01:19are under threat in this war, civilian infrastructures of basically all kinds.
01:25Obviously, the economic sensitivity globally is around oil infrastructure.
01:31Israel has heavily bombarded Iranian nuclear sites, in particular, the power plant at Bushir.
01:38Right. But for Iran, the sort of critical weapon against the Gulf is, of course, the desalination plants.
01:45In fact, I'm sort of making the argument that it's sort of raised to a level that's even greater than
01:50sort of nuclear threats,
01:51which is sort of an interesting role reversal in this particular conflict.
01:57So, you know, if a desalination plant is hit there, I mean, how quickly do things become impossible for people
02:04to live in the region?
02:05And how long does one get a plant of that kind back up and running?
02:10Sure. I mean, I think that the real difficulty is if you take these plants out of the supply chain,
02:16right,
02:17it could take days, weeks, months to recover that capacity.
02:22So I would sort of put these countries into sort of two separate categories.
02:27Right. So the smaller countries, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar,
02:30they don't have the same strategic depth as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
02:35Right. So as the figures that you presented earlier suggest these countries are less dependent on desalinated water.
02:43In particular, Saudi Arabia has a sort of a larger territory, larger supply of groundwater.
02:49And then the other part is just their sort of ability to sort of make up capacity.
02:54Right. So in October, I was able to visit with the Saudi Water Authority and the Saline Water Conversion Corporation.
03:01And one of the things that they really stressed to me was their backup, their reserve capacity,
03:06the ability to flow water to a needed region. Right.
03:10Under normal circumstances, you might have a situation where you have pilgrims coming to Mecca
03:14and you have a seasonal spike in demand and you need to sort of flow more resources from one set
03:22of plants to the other.
03:23Saudi Arabia has over 14000 kilometers of water transmission pipelines.
03:28Right. So we've talked a lot about oil transmission, right?
03:32The east-west pipeline connecting the Persian Gulf with the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia.
03:36But Saudi Arabia also has strategic depth in terms of its water pipeline system.
03:41So I think the same thing goes for the UAE, right?
03:44They have a reserve capacity in the Liwa Oasis.
03:49They've basically pumped desalinated underground to provide a multi-month supply.
03:55I was actually checking in after the attack on the Doha West power and desalination plant about reserve capacity for
04:03Kuwait.
04:04And as best as I can tell, you've got about a weak strategic reserve for a place like Kuwait.
04:11I mean, one of the things that is, I think, a sort of eerie callback to the past is Kuwait
04:18suffered this before.
04:19In 1990-91, when Saddam Hussein and Iraq invaded, they actually purposefully sabotaged desalination, power plants, oil wells, caused an
04:30oil slick in the Gulf and basically had a strategy of ecological terror.
04:35So we've actually seen this play out in the past.
04:39And that was a catastrophe for Kuwait that had very immediate impacts on their water supply, but has really left
04:47lasting scars on that society and economy for years and even decades after that event.
04:54It does sound like they're still quite vulnerable when it comes to that.
04:57And, you know, these plants, they're really vast areas of land.
05:00And are they well protected, I mean, or are they quite easy targets?
05:06I mean, these are soft targets.
05:08This is municipal infrastructure.
05:10I think one of the worries that I've been thinking about throughout this conflict is that, for example, if you
05:17were to look at an aerial photograph of a place like Dubai, right?
05:22Most of us know Dubai via the Burj Al Arab or the Burj Khalifa, you know, the palm, the sort
05:29of signature tourist infrastructures, the airport, things like that.
05:33But if you actually look to one side, you have this sort of vast industrial complex and port at Jebel
05:40Ali.
05:41And this is very characteristic where you'll have conjoined power and desalination plants, port facilities, in some cases, you know,
05:49oil refining capacity.
05:51So you have lots of different infrastructures, aluminum plants, things like that, that are lined up one next to the
05:57other.
05:57So even if Iran doesn't pursue a concerted strategy to hit those plants, there may be incidental fire taken from
06:06drones and missiles.
06:07And I think we've seen a few incidences of that throughout the war thus far.
06:12So I think that's sort of one of my worries is that even if you don't have this sort of,
06:17you know, concerted strategy on Iran's part, you may have incidental damage.
06:22And the desalination plants, they are, of course, run by fossil fuels, by petrol.
06:26So is that already impacting supplies?
06:31I think no.
06:34The amount of fossil fuels needed to run these plants, depending on how you slice it, you could take figures
06:44of between 10 to 20 percent for a country like Saudi Arabia of fossil fuels that are produced every day
06:50are used in order to power, you know, electrical and desalination functions.
06:55So there's plenty of spare capacity, I think, to to make up any eventuality in that case.
07:04But again, the real worry is not if one plant goes offline.
07:10I think the real worry is if Iran were to sort of climb the escalation ladder even further and decide
07:16to attack multiple plants.
07:18Right.
07:19If you were able to take out all of the Saudi plants on the Persian Gulf Coast or all of
07:25Kuwait's plants, then then you wouldn't have that spare capacity to sort of make up.
07:31Yeah.
07:32And people would be in direct jeopardy.
07:33Michael, thanks so much for your time and bringing us your insight here on France 24.
07:37We're very much appreciated.
Comments