Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sanam Mahoozi, Research Associate, City St George’s, University of London

The Gulf region has been defined by oil for decades. Tankers, pipelines and refineries have long been seen as the region’s most critical – and vulnerable – assets.

In the past few days, US-Israeli strikes hit oil depots in Tehran, with reports emerging of black rain falling for hours afterwards, which has been described in the media as acid rain.

But it is the networks and connections that support access to water and the desalination plants that now sustain daily life.

When oil supplies are restricted and prices escalate, oil “shocks” damage economies. But a water crisis can destabilise societies.

Across the Arabian Peninsula, seawater desalination, which turns saltwater into drinking water, has transformed some of the driest landscapes on Earth into thriving urban societies. Cities such as Dubai, Doha, Kuwait City and Abu Dhabi rely overwhelmingly are massively dependent on desalination plants.

For instance, 70% of Saudi Arabia’s drinking water comes from desalination plants. In Kuwait and Oman the figure is 90%. Without desalination plants, large parts of the region’s modern urban systems would struggle to exist.

Yet this technological achievement has quietly produced a new form of strategic vulnerability. The Gulf‘s water security depends on a relatively small number of massive coastal plants – industrial complexes that operate as the lifelines of entire cities.

The current military conflict has begun to expose this. Missile strikes and drone interceptions have occurred at, or near to, major desalination and water and power complexes in the Gulf. Both Iran and the US have been accused of having targeted these facilities. Even when damage is limited, the proximity of attacks highlights how exposed these facilities are to modern warfare.

Unlike oil pipelines or storage terminals, desalination plants cannot easily be bypassed or replaced. They are fixed, highly complex installations requiring large energy inputs, specialised membranes or thermal systems, and continuous chemical and mechanical treatment processes. Repairing serious damage to a major plant could take months or longer.

Read more:
Persian Gulf desalination plants could become military targets in regional war

The consequences of disruption would be immediate. Most cities in the region have limited water storage capacity. If a major desalination plant was out of action, governments could face the prospect of emergency water rationing for millions of residents within a matter of days. Hospitals, sanitation systems, food production and industry would all be affected simultaneously.

This risk is amplified by the region’s underlying water scarcity. The Middle East is among the most water-stressed regions in the world. Rainfall is low and highly variable, while rising temperatures increase evaporation and water demand. Groundwater aquifers have been heavily depleted across much of the region.

In Iran, declining river flows, prolonged drought and over extraction of groundwater have already left dams running dry. Similar pressures exist across other countries where renewable freshwater resources are extremely limited. Desalination has, therefore, evolved from a supplementary technology into the backbone of urban water systems. This shift has produced what might be called “desalination dependency”: a condition in which entire societies rely on a small number of centralised facilities to maintain their basic water supply.

The scale of this dependency is striking. Roughly 100 million people in the wider region depend directly on desalinated water. The Arabian Peninsula alone accounts for a substantial share of global desalination capacity, and the ten of the largest plants in the world are concentrated along the shores of the Gulf and the Red Sea. As water scarcity intensifies in the region, this dependence is likely to grow. But greater reliance also means greater exposure.

Water infrastructure has historically been vulnerable during conflicts. From Iraq to Syria to Yemen, water treatment plants, pumping stations and reservoirs have been damaged or targeted during conflicts. International humanitarian law recognises this danger. Article 54(2) of protocol additional to the Geneva conventions of August 12 1949, and relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts (protocol I), states that:

It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.

These protections apply to both international and non-international armed conflicts.

Big risks

The humanitarian consequences of disabling these huge desalination plants would be severe. Unlike oil infrastructure, which can sometimes be bypassed through global markets or emergency reserves, urban water supply systems are highly localised. If a desalination plant serving a large metropolitan area was hit and damaged in an attack, there would be few immediate alternatives. Water imports by tanker or emergency desalination units could provide temporary relief, but they could not fully replace the daily output of a large facility.

The ripple effects would extend far beyond drinking water. Sanitation systems would begin to fail, public health risks would rise, and economic activity could slow dramatically. Tourism, industry and services – all pillars of Gulf states’ economies – depend on stable water supplies.

The broader geopolitical implications are equally important. The Gulf is increasingly becoming a testing ground for a new form of infrastructure vulnerability in the age of climate stress: the weaponisation of water production systems. As desalination expands globally – from California and Australia to North Africa and southern Europe – similar vulnerabilities may emerge elsewhere. Coastal megacities facing drought are investing heavily in large desalination facilities to secure future water supplies. The expectations of protection of such infrastructure during conflict will therefore have consequences far beyond the Middle East.

Protecting desalination plants is not merely a regional concern. It is part of a broader challenge of safeguarding the technological systems that sustain modern societies under conditions of environmental scarcity.

Several strategies could reduce risk. Expanding wastewater recycling and replenishing natural water storage areas could diversify water sources. Distributed desalination systems — smaller plants spread across multiple locations — could reduce reliance on single large facilities. Increasing strategic water storage capacity would also provide cities with a buffer against sudden disruptions.

But technical solutions alone cannot address the core issue. The real challenge lies in recognising desalination plants for what they have become: critical humanitarian infrastructure on which entire populations depend.

For much of the 20th century, oil defined the cities of the Gulf. In the 21st century, desalinated water keeps them alive.

Sanam Mahoozi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Iran and the Arabian Peninsula depend on desalination plants to survive – why water has become a target – https://theconversation.com/iran-and-the-arabian-peninsula-depend-on-desalination-plants-to-survive-why-water-has-become-a-target-278142

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christian Emery, Associate Professor in International Politics, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL

As the US and Israel’s assault on Iran grinds on, the Trump administration has issued increasingly bellicose claims that American and Israeli forces are delivering ferocious blows to the Iranian regime.

The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, warned of the “most intense” day of strikes yet on March 10. And Donald Trump followed with a claim that the war will end soon because there is “practically nothing left” in Iran for the US military to target.

This is all part of a campaign that the White House has declared is aimed at “systematically dismantling the Iranian regime’s ability to ever again threaten America, our allies, and global security.”

So far, this campaign has largely targeted Iran’s military and nuclear facilities. But some critical non-military infrastructure has also come under attack. Israel struck two oil refineries and two oil storage facilities near Tehran on March 8, with Iran accusing the US of attacking a desalination plant the same day.

Yet one target vital to Iran’s economic survival, its largest export terminal for sending oil to international markets, remains unscathed. That terminal sits on Kharg, a small coral island off Iran’s south-western coast. This is where oil pumped across Iranian oil fields arrives via subsea pipelines to be loaded on to tankers, mostly bound for China.

At peak capacity, the terminal’s vast storage facilities and multiple jetties can handle millions of barrels of oil per day. Kharg accounts for an extraordinary 90% of Iranian crude exports and tens of billions of US dollars of annual government revenue.

No other major oil-producing country is so reliant on just one facility. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf, and massive producers elsewhere such as Russia, Mexico and Venezuela, do not concentrate almost all their export capacity in a single location.

Iran’s energy lifeline

Kharg Island became the linchpin of Iran’s oil industry due to a convergence of history and geography. Nowadays, Kharg is widely known among Iranians as the “forbidden island” because of the tight military restrictions and secrecy that surround it.

Yet behind its modern geoeconomic significance lies an ancient history, from early human settlements dating back more than 4,000 years to occupation by various empires that understood its strategic maritime importance as a trading post. The island also housed political prisoners in the mid-20th century, before the construction of Kharg’s modern terminal began in 1958.

The island quickly became Iran’s dominant export port for two reasons. First, it could be connected by pipeline to the major oil fields in south-western Iran. And second, its deep water location made it one of the only places on Iran’s western coast that could accommodate the new supertankers that were at the time dramatically reducing the cost of transporting oil.

Once the gigantic storage facilities, jetties and subsea pipelines feeding the terminal had been constructed, centralising exports there created significant efficiencies. Oil from multiple fields could share the same storage and loading infrastructure, thereby reducing overall operating costs.

Kharg’s dominance in the national oil export system was further reinforced after the Islamic revolution in 1979. This was because regional tensions and Iran’s emphasis on self-reliance discouraged it from using pipelines that pass through neighbouring countries.

At first glance, Iran’s reliance on one terminal for nearly all its oil exports seems like a major strategic vulnerability. There are also no significant operational challenges preventing the US and Israel from destroying it. Yet, paradoxically, this is precisely why it has not been targeted thus far.

Crippling Iran’s entire oil industry for months – if not years – would shatter the already fragile confidence in financial markets that Trump can achieve his vague war aims without long-term disruption to the global economy. Some analysts predict that oil prices could soar to US$150 (£112) a barrel if Kharg is hit.

To put that figure into context, Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine caused Brent crude to rise to well over US$100 a barrel for four months. This was not the only cause of the roughly 9% surge in inflation seen at the time, but it was an important factor in the ensuing cost of living crisis.

Launching an attack on Kharg would likely expose Trump’s gamble in launching a war against Iran while simultaneously promising US consumers that virtually everything would become more affordable as a catastrophic error. American voters are indicating that inflation and the cost of living are their biggest concerns ahead of the upcoming midterm elections in November.

Of course, Trump’s intervention in Iran may lead to rising prices even if the US does not attack Kharg Island. The wider disruption to Gulf shipping in the strait of Hormuz has already caused oil prices to rise to around US$100 per barrel. And in his first statement since becoming Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to keep blocking the waterway.

But at least for the moment, Trump seems to realise that Kharg Island needs to be left intact if he is to preserve the already shaky notion that he can end this war in a manner he can present as a success – which increasingly looks like degrading Iran but not forcing it to capitulate – without causing long-term economic pain for Americans.

One other factor preventing the US from destroying Kharg is that it would cause long-lasting damage to the Iranian economy. This would undermine any pretence that Trump is acting in the interests of the Iranian people, as he has claimed, since any new government would be financially crippled if the regime did collapse.

So Kharg Island survives intact for now. This is, in large part, due to the fundamental contradiction between Trump’s objectives in Iran and the political and economic costs he is willing to incur in pursuit of them.

Christian Emery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Kharg Island: Iran’s energy lifeline that has so far escaped attack – https://theconversation.com/kharg-island-irans-energy-lifeline-that-has-so-far-escaped-attack-278139

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ben Seymour, PhD Candidate in International Relations, Nottingham Trent University

In the two weeks since the US and Israeli strikes on Iran began, Donald Trump’s war aims have fluctuated between crippling Iranian military capabilities and toppling the regime that has ruled there since 1979. But despite the success of the initial strikes, which killed the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, many analysts believe that air power alone will not be sufficient to bring about regime change.

They say this objective would be impossible to achieve without combat troops on the ground, a move that most US military and political leaders have long opposed. Instead, one idea that seems to be circulating in Washington is to support an invasion by armed Kurdish groups in Iraq and western Iran to destabilise the Islamic Republic from within.

Trump publicly backed away from this idea on March 6, telling reporters: “I don’t want the Kurds to go into Iran … The war is complicated enough as it is.” But, given Trump’s trademark inconsistency and the unpredictable nature of this conflict, an armed Kurdish uprising remains a distinct possibility. Such a scenario could have consequences that extend far beyond Iran.

The Kurds are an ethnic group with their own language and culture who have lived in a mountainous area of the Middle East for centuries. Nowadays, they number around 30 million and live in a region that spans parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The Kurds are widely considered to be the world’s largest stateless people because they do not have a country of their own.

This situation dates to the end of the first world war, when the Ottoman empire collapsed. Kurdish leaders at that time hoped to establish their own state, having lived for 400 years under Ottoman rule. But instead their homeland was divided between several new countries that emerged from the defeated Ottoman state. This left Kurdish communities split across international borders.

Around 10% of Iran’s population is Kurdish and many live in the country’s north-west near the borders of Iraq and Turkey. The Kurdish region of Iran has long been the least economically developed part of the country and Kurdish political parties are outlawed. Armed Kurdish groups have periodically clashed with the Iranian state, demanding greater autonomy or independence.

The Kurdish question is even more sensitive in Turkey, which is home to the largest population of Kurds in the world. Since 1984, the Turkish state has been locked in conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), an armed group that has fought to establish an independent Kurdish state. This conflict has killed more than 40,000 people in the past four decades.

For the Turkish government, the possibility that the US may support Kurdish fighters in neighbouring Iran is therefore not just a foreign policy issue. Turkish leaders worry that strengthening Kurdish armed groups elsewhere in the region could embolden similar movements inside Turkey itself.

In the recent past, Turkey has launched military incursions into the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Syria. It has also fought a brutal counterinsurgency against PKK fighters inside its own borders. These actions show how strongly Turkish leaders oppose any notion of Kurdish independence anywhere in the region.

American support for Kurdish fighters has caused tension between the US and Turkey in the past. Turkey strongly opposed the partnership between Washington and Syrian Kurdish forces during the fight against the Islamic State militant group in Syria in the late 2010s. It argued that some of these Kurdish groups were linked to the PKK.

Turkey’s relations with Israel have also been strained by the Kurdish question. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has accused the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of undermining the transitional Syrian government by aiding Kurdish groups there. The Kurdish issue has clearly become a major source of tension between Turkey, a key member of the Nato alliance, and the west.

So far, Turkey has largely remained neutral in the Iran war. Despite their regional rivalry, Turkish and Iranian leaders share concerns about Kurdish separatist movements and have sometimes cooperated to contain them. In the past, security forces from both countries have coordinated efforts against Kurdish militant groups operating along their shared border.

Turkish and Iranian officials have also exchanged intelligence and carried out military operations against Kurdish fighters moving between the two countries. And both governments strongly opposed the 2017 referendum on independence that was held by the Kurds in northern Iraq. Over 92% of votes were cast in favour of independence.

Iranian regime change

For Turkey, the collapse or fragmentation of the Iranian state would be deeply worrying. It could create exactly the conditions Turkish leaders fear most: armed Kurdish groups operating across a much longer and more unstable border.

Another concern is the possibility of a new refugee crisis. Turkey already hosts nearly 4 million Syrians following the civil war that began there in 2011 – the largest refugee population in the world. This has become a major political issue inside Turkey.

If conflict or state collapse in Iran – a larger and even more politically complex state than Syria – triggers large-scale displacement, many more refugees could head west towards Turkey. Such a scenario would place considerable political and economic pressure on the government.

Washington may see the Kurds as a useful way to confront the Iranian regime without deploying American troops. But such a strategy could create new tensions elsewhere in the region. For Turkey, Kurdish militancy is not simply a foreign policy issue but a core national security concern.

If the Iran war ends up empowering Kurdish armed groups or destabilising Turkey’s border, Erdoğan may yet feel compelled to respond. This could open up another front in an already expanding regional conflict.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why the next escalation in the Iran conflict could be between the US and Turkey – https://theconversation.com/why-the-next-escalation-in-the-iran-conflict-could-be-between-the-us-and-turkey-278341

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Maria Sobolewska, Professor of Politics, University of Manchester

Before each general election in the late 1990s and early 2000s, campaign group Operation Black Vote used to publish a list of the most ethnically diverse constituencies in the UK. These were the areas in which the size of the non-white population exceeded the size of the incumbent party’s majority. The idea was to persuade political parties to campaign in these places and to think about what they were offering to ethnic minority voters.

Operation Black Vote, which was founded in 1996 to empower voters from ethnic minority backgrounds, had good reason to worry. Both anecdotal and academic research shows that ethnic minority voters had been largely taken for granted by the Labour party.

As an example, the prominent Labour politician Roy Hattersley wrote candidly about the minority vote contributing to his 1974 re-election as an MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook: “I won with an increased majority, the well-organised and invariably loyal Kashmiris had cast their disciplined vote early in the day.”

Unsurprisingly, this “invariably loyal” vote led to minority voters reporting less contact from parties during election campaigns.

With support for Labour almost always in the region of 70% to 80% across most Asian and Black voter groups, the fact that David Weaver, the chairman of Operation Black Vote, has now said that Labour is in “deep trouble” with Black voters is therefore remarkable.

Indian and Muslim voters are already leaving

Historically, different ethnic groups had differing levels of support for Labour but even in the fragmented 2024 general election, it remained the most popular choice for British Black and Asian voters. However, this is a far cry from Labour being able to take this vote for granted. Two recent developments should give the party particular pause.

First, Indian-origin Britons have already started drifting away from Labour. Their movement towards the Conservatives has been slow but steady since 2010. The continuous nature of this defection suggests that there is little Labour could do to reverse it. While in 2024 a plurality of British Indians still chose Labour, this is the lowest vote share the party has received from this group in any recorded general election.

Second, and perhaps more alarming, is a break in the traditional loyalty among British Muslims that characterised the 2024 general election. Labour voting among this group collapsed by almost 30% and delivered a handful of independent MPs to parliament. Some took Labour’s historically safe seats, mostly on pro-Gaza tickets.

More recently, these voters moved towards the Green party in the 2026 byelection in Gorton and Denton. It is this choice that represents a new and particularly threatening issue for Labour. As a result of the general fragmentation of the party system, ethnic minority voters now seem to have alternative choices, and feel freer to opt for them.

Muslim voters defected from Labour in 2005 over the Iraq war but the resulting protest vote for the Liberal Democrats was short-lived. By 2010 the Muslim vote for Labour had recovered.

The contrast with today’s vote switching and record support for small parties is stark. With more viable options on the ballot, it is not inconceivable that many Muslim voters may not return to Labour.

Could Black voters follow?

While Black voters remained the most loyal group in 2024, they too might feel a little freer to go. Even the historically no-go option for Black voters, the Conservative party, might seem like a possibility. In a significant departure from their traditional approach, the Tories have been making an effort to tackle race and inequality. They commissioned a major review of racial disparities, increased their ethnic diversity in Parliament and delivered the historically most ethnically diverse cabinet to date. It is worth noting that the current leader Kemi Badenoch and her predecessor Rishi Sunak are both of ethnic minority origin.

Labour is yet to appoint a non-white leader. And its record in government is certainly doing very little to dissuade minority voters from looking elsewhere.

Among the failures that could count against them with Black voters are a continuation of the unpopular “hostile environment” immigration policy and an aggressive curtailment of settlement policies. These are unlikely to play well with a group that had already fallen victim to the previous government’s similar policies via the Windrush scandal. Labour’s ineffective implementation of the compensation scheme for the victims of this scandal, who were most likely to identify as British Black Caribbean, only compounds this issue.

More recently, the issue of justice has emerged as a major divide between Labour and its Black supporters. The history of racial inequalities in the justice system is long and trust in judicial institutions among Black Britons is deservedly low. Given this, the current proposals to abolish jury trials could be seen as a betrayal of trust. The proposal is intended to deal with the backlog in the courts but the evidence shows juries reduce discrimination in trials. Black voters report law and order as the most important issue – far more than the other ethnic minority voters – so this is clearly not going to go unnoticed.

Given the lack of action and progress on other important issues for the Black community, such as child poverty and the cost-of-living crisis, Labour should really worry about losing not just their Muslim voters, and the Indian origin minority, but also its most loyal Black voters too. They truly cannot and should not take any of these groups for granted.

Maria Sobolewska received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

– ref. Is Labour in ‘deep trouble’ with Black voters? What the evidence tells us – https://theconversation.com/is-labour-in-deep-trouble-with-black-voters-what-the-evidence-tells-us-278334

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sanam Mahoozi, Research Associate, City St George’s, University of London

The Gulf region has been defined by oil for decades. Tankers, pipelines and refineries have long been seen as the region’s most critical – and vulnerable – assets.

In the past few days, US-Israeli strikes hit oil depots in Tehran, with reports emerging of black rain falling for hours afterwards, which has been described in the media as acid rain.

But it is the networks and connections that support access to water and the desalination plants that now sustain daily life.

When oil supplies are restricted and prices escalate, oil “shocks” damage economies. But a water crisis can destabilise societies.

Across the Arabian Peninsula, seawater desalination, which turns saltwater into drinking water, has transformed some of the driest landscapes on Earth into thriving urban societies. Cities such as Dubai, Doha, Kuwait City and Abu Dhabi rely overwhelmingly are massively dependent on desalination plants.

For instance, 70% of Saudi Arabia’s drinking water comes from desalination plants. In Kuwait and Oman the figure is 90%. Without desalination plants, large parts of the region’s modern urban systems would struggle to exist.

Yet this technological achievement has quietly produced a new form of strategic vulnerability. The Gulf‘s water security depends on a relatively small number of massive coastal plants – industrial complexes that operate as the lifelines of entire cities.

The current military conflict has begun to expose this. Missile strikes and drone interceptions have occurred at, or near to, major desalination and water and power complexes in the Gulf. Both Iran and the US have been accused of having targeted these facilities. Even when damage is limited, the proximity of attacks highlights how exposed these facilities are to modern warfare.

Unlike oil pipelines or storage terminals, desalination plants cannot easily be bypassed or replaced. They are fixed, highly complex installations requiring large energy inputs, specialised membranes or thermal systems, and continuous chemical and mechanical treatment processes. Repairing serious damage to a major plant could take months or longer.

Read more:
Persian Gulf desalination plants could become military targets in regional war

The consequences of disruption would be immediate. Most cities in the region have limited water storage capacity. If a major desalination plant was out of action, governments could face the prospect of emergency water rationing for millions of residents within a matter of days. Hospitals, sanitation systems, food production and industry would all be affected simultaneously.

This risk is amplified by the region’s underlying water scarcity. The Middle East is among the most water-stressed regions in the world. Rainfall is low and highly variable, while rising temperatures increase evaporation and water demand. Groundwater aquifers have been heavily depleted across much of the region.

In Iran, declining river flows, prolonged drought and over extraction of groundwater have already left dams running dry. Similar pressures exist across other countries where renewable freshwater resources are extremely limited. Desalination has, therefore, evolved from a supplementary technology into the backbone of urban water systems. This shift has produced what might be called “desalination dependency”: a condition in which entire societies rely on a small number of centralised facilities to maintain their basic water supply.

The scale of this dependency is striking. Roughly 100 million people in the wider region depend directly on desalinated water. The Arabian Peninsula alone accounts for a substantial share of global desalination capacity, and the ten of the largest plants in the world are concentrated along the shores of the Gulf and the Red Sea. As water scarcity intensifies in the region, this dependence is likely to grow. But greater reliance also means greater exposure.

Water infrastructure has historically been vulnerable during conflicts. From Iraq to Syria to Yemen, water treatment plants, pumping stations and reservoirs have been damaged or targeted during conflicts. International humanitarian law recognises this danger. Article 54(2) of protocol additional to the Geneva conventions of August 12 1949, and relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts (protocol I), states that:

It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.

These protections apply to both international and non-international armed conflicts.

Big risks

The humanitarian consequences of disabling these huge desalination plants would be severe. Unlike oil infrastructure, which can sometimes be bypassed through global markets or emergency reserves, urban water supply systems are highly localised. If a desalination plant serving a large metropolitan area was hit and damaged in an attack, there would be few immediate alternatives. Water imports by tanker or emergency desalination units could provide temporary relief, but they could not fully replace the daily output of a large facility.

The ripple effects would extend far beyond drinking water. Sanitation systems would begin to fail, public health risks would rise, and economic activity could slow dramatically. Tourism, industry and services – all pillars of Gulf states’ economies – depend on stable water supplies.

The broader geopolitical implications are equally important. The Gulf is increasingly becoming a testing ground for a new form of infrastructure vulnerability in the age of climate stress: the weaponisation of water production systems. As desalination expands globally – from California and Australia to North Africa and southern Europe – similar vulnerabilities may emerge elsewhere. Coastal megacities facing drought are investing heavily in large desalination facilities to secure future water supplies. The expectations of protection of such infrastructure during conflict will therefore have consequences far beyond the Middle East.

Protecting desalination plants is not merely a regional concern. It is part of a broader challenge of safeguarding the technological systems that sustain modern societies under conditions of environmental scarcity.

Several strategies could reduce risk. Expanding wastewater recycling and replenishing natural water storage areas could diversify water sources. Distributed desalination systems — smaller plants spread across multiple locations — could reduce reliance on single large facilities. Increasing strategic water storage capacity would also provide cities with a buffer against sudden disruptions.

But technical solutions alone cannot address the core issue. The real challenge lies in recognising desalination plants for what they have become: critical humanitarian infrastructure on which entire populations depend.

For much of the 20th century, oil defined the cities of the Gulf. In the 21st century, desalinated water keeps them alive.

Sanam Mahoozi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Iran and the Arabian Penisula depend on desalination plants to survive – why water has become a target – https://theconversation.com/iran-and-the-arabian-penisula-depend-on-desalination-plants-to-survive-why-water-has-become-a-target-278142

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ruth Corps, Early Career Research Fellow in Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Sheffield

“Ultimately, the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or friendship, is conversation,” wrote Oscar Wilde.

We often think of conversation as effortless. But beneath its apparent ease lies an extraordinary feat of coordination – a finely tuned dance of listening and speaking.

Summoning a single word in your mind and then saying it takes at least 600 milliseconds. Yet the most common gap between one person finishing a speaking turn and the other beginning is around 200 milliseconds, regardless of the language they are speaking.

This means we usually start talking too quickly to have planned our response after the other person has finished. Somehow, our brains are always ahead of the conversation.

How do we manage this? As we listen, our brains operate like a sophisticated version of predictive text. Instead of waiting for a sentence to finish, we continuously predict how it is likely to end.

In a study with colleagues in the UK and Germany, we found that people with some hearing loss often rely more heavily on these predictive cues to keep conversations flowing. But over time, the effort this requires can have other negative effects.

While smartphones rely on simple word-to-word probabilities, human prediction is far richer. We combine these probabilistic cues with knowledge about the speaker (who they are, what they like, how they usually talk) as well as the surrounding environment and broader topic of conversation.

If someone says, “I’d like to wear the nice …”, your brain immediately narrows the possibilities to things that can be worn — perhaps a tie or a dress. And prediction doesn’t stop there. If the speaker sounds male, listeners may be more likely to predict “tie”; if the speaker sounds female, “dress”.

Prediction also helps us determine when we can speak. As a sentence unfolds, we predict its structure, rhythm, melody and likely final words. These subconscious timing predictions allow us to enter the conversation with remarkable precision, enhancing social connections by avoiding talking over someone or leaving awkward pauses.

How hearing loss affects this process

The delicate coordination of conversation relies on our brain having enough cognitive resources to support prediction, response planning and timing. But when hearing becomes more difficult, the brain has to work harder to identify sounds and words, stretching these resources.

For around half of people over 55, hearing loss makes everyday conversation harder work for the brain. Fewer resources are available for higher-level conversational processes, making the roughly 200-millisecond rhythm of turn-taking harder to maintain. This can lead to longer, more disruptive gaps in the conversation.

Until recently, it has been unclear exactly why these longer gaps arise. To what degree do people with hearing loss find it harder to predict when someone will finish speaking? And how much does the extra effort to hear words restrict their ability to plan what to say next?

Our study disentangled these possibilities by testing people aged 50 to 80 years old, some of whom had mild-to-moderate hearing loss. We tested them under listening conditions that ranged from comfortable, clear speech to situations where speech was only just intelligible.

This allowed us to separate the effects of hearing loss from those of more demanding listening conditions. This distinction matters because while both increase listening effort, they may disrupt different aspects of conversation.

Our results revealed a clear pattern. When listening conditions were comfortable, people with hearing loss relied more heavily on predictions of what the other person would say next than those who had clear hearing. Prediction acted as a compensatory strategy for people with hearing loss, helping maintain conversational coordination to a level very similar to those without hearing loss.

However, when listening became more effortful because speech was presented at the quietest level participants could understand, this predictive advantage disappeared. The additional effort needed for those with hearing loss appeared to leave them too little cognitive capacity to support their previously compensatory powers of prediction.

This helps to explain why people with hearing loss can appear perfectly fluent conversational partners in quiet, one-to-one settings, yet struggle in noisy environments where listening becomes much more effortful. Of course, people with full hearing also start to experience this effect in noisy bars or crowded restaurants.

Losing the skill of conversation

Conversation is a high-speed cognitive skill and, like any other skill, it benefits from regular use. When conversation becomes exhausting owing to hearing loss, people may withdraw from social interaction to avoid the effort of staying in sync. Greater social isolation is associated with poorer mental, physical and cognitive health.

But a reduction in the frequency of conversations that someone is having may also weaken the cognitive mechanisms that support them – like a muscle weakens from lack of use. This could add to their reluctance to talk to people. We hope to explore this “use it or lose it” effect in our future research.

Already, we have been surprised by just how much subconscious coordination goes into everyday conversation. Recognising the particular needs – and skills – of people with hearing loss is an important part of maintaining “this bond of all companionship”.

Ruth Corps has received funding from the ESRC and the Leverhulme Trust.

– ref. How conversation works – and why people with hearing loss rely more on their powers of prediction – https://theconversation.com/how-conversation-works-and-why-people-with-hearing-loss-rely-more-on-their-powers-of-prediction-277448