The CIA calls it the “strategic commodity” of the Middle East. But it’s not referring to oil or natural gas. What the American spy agency has in mind is far more prosaic: drinking water. Don’t underestimate it, though, because if military hostilities continue to escalate, water could become the geopolitical commodity that decides the war between the US and Iran.
The Persian Gulf is gifted with a fabulous hydrocarbon endowment, worth trillions of dollars. What its desertic countries don’t have is water. From the 1970s onward, the oil money bought a solution: desalination plants. Today, the region relies on nearly 450 facilities to stop everyone going thirsty.
The US Central Intelligence Agency has been briefing American policymakers for decades on the inherent risk of relying on those plants for such a crucial supply. In a secret assessment in the early 1980s — since declassified — the CIA said: “Senior government officials in some of the countries perceive it [water] as more important than oil to the national well-being.”
More than four decades later, not much has changed. Desalination remains a relatively cost-effective technology to transform sea water into drinking water. The downside is the vulnerability of the installations, and the oil and gas consumption required to fire the power generators that run the plants.
About 100 million people live in the countries belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman — all now under Iranian attack. Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are, for all practical purposes, completely dependent on the desalination plants, particularly for metropolises such as Dubai. Saudi Arabia, and especially its capital, Riyadh, also relies heavily on them.
Hellbound and Down 