The Iran War's Most Precious Commodity Isn't Oil, It's Desalinated Water

Terr_

> Under international law, the desalination plants are protected. But I have seen enough Middle Eastern wars to know the weight of the Geneva Conventions when missiles and bombs start flying. Not just the Middle East either. The author does note this later in piece ("Zaporizhzhia") where Russia has been bombing Ukrainian power-plants, in a war-crime way which is much more about freezing civilians to death in the winter than measured military goals. > “Riyadh would have to evacuate within a week if the plant, its pipelines, or associated power infrastructure were seriously damaged or destroyed,” according to a 2008 memo from the US embassy in the kingdom released by Wikileaks. To make another, odder connection: Hong Kong. Once or twice back during the PRC crackdown on free speech, I've seen people wonder about local independence, but the region is entirely dependent on fresh water piped in from across the border, so all an enraged PRC would need to do is start closing some valves. The large flow needed would be difficult to ship by tanker (and easy to blockade) and any desalinization system (bringing us back to this topic) would be somewhere the top-5 largest in the world... and probably require a nuclear-reactor to power it locally too.

brianpbeau

No one actually believed that Iraq would set all of Kuwait on fire in the 90s until they did.

metalman

Hydraulic despotism is an ancient favorite, for well, despots, along with "fees", tarrifs and dutys, patent royal and all that. hence in persia the develooment of quanats, which are slightly more secure from oportunistic destruction or controll, as someone has to to shown that they are there. the mid term epstien wars, are a typical scenario for grasping at this particular crime, but, is lost amongst a great many other horrors

lazide

I lived in India for awhile, and in many areas (including very populated cities), clean (or even consistently available) water just isn’t a thing. At least out of a tap. Relatively inexpensive (as in a months wages for a typical ‘middle class’ person, as much as such a person exists in India!) reverse osmosis setups for household use exist, and frankly are pretty necessary to avoid all sorts of problems. I took a dissolved solids measurement out of my household tap in Hyderabad once, for instance, and it read over 750! The maximum you might find in ‘acceptable’, but still very hard, water in the US is 150ish.