Strikes on nonmilitary infrastructure were a “serious escalation,” analysts said, and could widen the war’s impact on civilians.

Water desalination plants have come under attack in Iran and on the Persian Gulf island of Bahrain over the weekend, threatening a resource vital to life in the harsh desert climates of the region.

On Saturday, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused the United States of attacking a desalination plant on Qeshm Island, affecting the water supply for 30 villages.

“The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,” he said on social media, calling the attack “a dangerous move with grave consequences.”

Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said that U.S. forces were not responsible for that attack.

A day later, Bahrain’s interior ministry said that an Iranian drone had “caused material damage” to a desalination plant there, accusing Iran of “indiscriminately” attacking civilian targets. The country’s water and electricity authority said there had been “no impact on water supplies or water network capacity.”

It was not immediately clear whether either plant was still functioning. And there was no immediate comment from Iran on Bahrain’s allegation.

Iran has faced severe water shortages in recent years, and Gulf countries like Bahrain depend heavily on desalination technology — which turns seawater into drinking water — to sustain tens of millions of people. Desalination infrastructure is one of the most vulnerable military targets in the region because without it, the Gulf’s sprawling metropolises would effectively collapse.

“Targeting a desalination plant in Bahrain crosses an important threshold and represents a serious escalation,” said Abdullah Baabood, an Omani academic at Waseda University in Japan.

“In the Gulf, desalination facilities are not merely infrastructure,” he added. “They are essential lifelines that supply drinking water to millions. Striking them risks turning a military confrontation into a direct threat to civilian survival.”

Iranian officials have said that their attacks in the Gulf countries, which are close allies of the United States, are a response to the intense American-Israeli bombing campaign that began in Iran on Feb. 28 and that they are aimed at American military bases and U.S. soldiers, not civilians.

However, the hundreds of Iranian missiles and drones shot at the Gulf countries over the past week have also damaged civilian infrastructure, including airports, hotels and energy facilities. Gulf military forces, which have advanced missile-defense systems, have intercepted a vast majority of those attacks. But at least 10 civilians have been killed, according to a New York Times tally of official announcements.

Political analysts and diplomats have long warned about the vulnerability of desalination plants in the region should they become military targets.

In 2008, a diplomatic cable sent from the U.S. Embassy in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and later released by WikiLeaks warned that a single desalination plant provided Riyadh with more than 90 percent of its drinking water at the time.

The city “would have to evacuate within a week if the plant, its pipelines or associated power infrastructure were seriously damaged or destroyed,” the author wrote. “The current structure of the Saudi government could not exist” without the plant, the cable added.

Since then, the Saudi government has invested significantly in expanding water storage, reducing its vulnerability.

At the same time, the region’s cities have grown rapidly, drawing in large populations of foreign workers and straining the fragile ecosystems that underpin them.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5843243&forum_id=2\u0026show=6hr#49727352)