President Trump on Monday added Iran’s desalination plants to the list of infrastructure he may “blow up” if a deal isn’t reached to end the war, threatening attacks on the country’s water supply, a clear war crime under international law.
“The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social, though Iran continues to deny negotiations are taking place.
“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched,'” Trump added.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked later in the day why President Trump was threatening what would amount to a potential war crime. “Look, the president has made it quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time, as evidenced by the statement that you just read, that their best move is to make a deal, or else the United States armed forces have capabilities beyond their wildest imagination, and the president is not afraid to use them,” she said.
Earlier in March, Iran said that the US had struck a desalination plant on Iran’s Qeshm Island, affecting the water supply for 30 villages. US Central Command denied that it hit the facility, though the strike was also recorded by the Human Rights Activist News Agency, or HRANA, a US-based and US-funded NGO that’s very critical of the Iranian government. The HRANA didn’t specify if it was a US or Israeli strike.
Following the strike on the desalination plant in Qeshm Island, Bahrain said that an Iranian drone struck one of its desalination plants. On Sunday, a desalination plant came under attack in Kuwait, killing an Indian worker. For its part, Iran denied it was responsible and claimed it was some sort of “false flag” operation.
The US’s Gulf Arab allies are extremely reliant on desalination plants for their water supply, much more so than Iran, meaning that any large-scale targeting of such facilities in the region could cause a major humanitarian crisis.
