War is often measured in lives lost and cities destroyed. But beyond the headlines and the frontlines, another crisis can unfold that is quieter, deeper, and far more enduring.
As conflict intensifies across the Middle East, ecosystems are destabilised, air and water are contaminated, and the climate burden grows heavier with every strike. This is not just a geopolitical crisis; it is also an environmental one, unfolding in real time, with consequences that will outlast the war itself.
The US-Israeli war on Iran, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has led to what has been described as the most severe global supply disruption since at least the 1970s and characterised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) as the “greatest global energy and food security challenge in history.”
Like all wars, the current war in the Middle East will leave a toxic legacy. War does not only kill people and destroy homes. It also damages the systems that make life possible, including water networks, sewage plants, farmland, ports, fuel depots and electricity infrastructure, often leaving polluted air, contaminated soil, and unsafe water long after the fighting slows.
Across recent conflicts, research points to the same pattern: fires, toxic debris, damaged sanitation, collapsing public health systems and ecosystems pushed beyond recovery. This environmental harm is not incidental. It is one of the ways in which war reshapes daily life.
The Iran war has unleashed a toxic mix of chemicals, heavy metals, and other pollutants that threaten everything from agriculture to drinking water to people’s health and will leave behind environmental damage and health risks that could persist for decades, experts say.
It is also a disaster for the climate, according to an analysis that finds it is draining the global carbon budget faster than 84 countries combined.
As warplanes, drones, and missiles kill thousands of people, level infrastructure, and turn the Middle East into a gigantic environmental sacrifice zone, the first analysis of the climate cost has found the conflict led to five million tons of greenhouse gas emissions in its first month alone.
“All the burning of oil and gas fields in the coastal areas, all the ships that are there, the oil tankers that are being burned or sunk — all of these mean pollution,” said Kaveh Madani, an Iranian scientist and director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health.
“For someone like me who has fought for sustainability and the protection of the environment in that region, this is like going many years backwards.”
Documenting the damage has proved daunting, with full accounting impossible for now, said Doug Weir, director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEO), a UK-based non-profit group that monitors environmental harms from armed conflicts.
The group uses remote satellite sensing and open-source intelligence to identify damage and score environmental risks to people, ecosystems, and agricultural land. So far, it has recorded more than 400 environmentally concerning incidents related to the war, though much is still unknown due to delays in satellite imagery and an Internet blackout in Iran, Weir said.
Before the conflict began, the region was already facing severe environmental stress, especially relating to water resources. Strikes on desalination plants in several countries now risk catastrophic consequences for communities that rely on them as a lifeline for water.
The conflict will likely cause even greater stress on natural resources, damage marine and terrestrial ecosystems, set back efforts to enhance water and climate resilience, and impact the food chain and food safety.
The US-Israeli axis claims to have bombed thousands of targets inside Iran, and Israel has hit hundreds more targets in Lebanon. Reports from both countries show the extensive destruction of infrastructure.
Destroyed buildings constitute the largest element of the estimated carbon cost. Based on reports by the Iranian Red Crescent that about 20,000 civilian buildings have been damaged by the conflict, the analysis estimates the total emissions from this sector to be 2.4 million tons of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e).
Fuel is the second biggest element, with US heavy bombers flying from as far away as the west of England to carry out raids over Iran. The analysis estimates between 150 and 270 million litres of fuel were consumed by aircraft and support vessels and vehicles in the first 14 days of the war, producing a total emission of 529,000 tCO2e.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS: One of the most shocking images of the war has been the dark clouds and black rain that fell over Tehran after Israel bombed four major fuel storage depots surrounding the city, setting millions of litres of fuel ablaze.
The analysis estimates that between 2.5 and 5.9 million barrels of oil have been burned in that attack and similar strikes, including Iranian retaliation on its Gulf neighbours, emitting an estimated 1.88 million tCO2e.
The air pollution unleashed could lead to many health problems. Perhaps the most enduring images of the war are of darkened skies from oil infrastructure set ablaze by airstrikes, including two weeks ago when black rain fell near Tehran.
Microscopic soot raises risks of lung and heart problems, while toxic chemicals pose long-term cancer risks, and heavy metals from the fallout could contaminate soil and water supplies, experts say.
In an effort to better understand the scale and nature of environmental harm associated with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the CEO has developed a structured methodology to systematically identify and assess environmentally relevant incidents.
This approach relies on the extensive monitoring of both traditional and social-media sources to detect incidents with potential environmental implications. These incidents are then subjected to a multi-layered verification process, supported by remote environmental assessments using satellite imagery.
The methodology enables near real-time insights into emerging environmental risks, despite the inherent complexities of conflict settings.
As of 10 March, the CEO had identified over 300 environmentally relevant incidents, of which 232 have undergone preliminary environmental risk assessment. The mapped results reveal a wide geographical distribution of incidents across Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Jordan, Cyprus, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Azerbaijan.
The findings indicate that the majority of incidents are associated with what are classified as “military objects”, accounting for 123 cases. Within this category, airbases emerge as the most impacted sub-type, with 26 recorded incidents. However, the analysis also highlights a broader and more complex pattern of environmental risk extending beyond military infrastructure.
Incidents involving civilian and dual-use facilities are increasingly evident, encompassing hospitals, tyre-storage sites, and oil refineries. These sites present diverse pollution profiles, ranging from hazardous emissions to soil and water contamination, thereby amplifying the long-term environmental and public-health risks.
As the conflict continues to escalate, CEO observations suggest a growing trend of attacks on civilian and dual-use infrastructure. This shift signals a concerning trajectory, with significant implications for environmental degradation, resource security, and the complexity of post-conflict recovery efforts. History shows the damage lasts for decades.
During the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s, for example, US forces sprayed almost 80 million litres of herbicides, including Agent Orange, across Vietnam, affecting roughly 2.9 million hectares of land and leaving dioxin in soils, water, and food chains for decades.
In Iraq, UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and later field investigations warned of long-term environmental and health risks linked to depleted uranium contamination and other toxic remnants of war. These older conflicts matter because they show that the environmental damage of war does not end with a ceasefire.
The lesson running from Vietnam and Iraq to Gaza and Ukraine is simple. War contaminates the conditions for life itself. It degrades land, water, air, and health in ways that can shape people’s lives for generations, especially where the fighting meshes with chemicals, oil, radiation risks and damaged public infrastructure.
Mansour Al-Saleh, an environmental consultant and agricultural expert at the Ministry of Environment, Water, and Agriculture in Saudi Arabia, told the Weekly that the agricultural sector is one of those most affected by the repercussions of wars and environmental tensions. Crops are exposed to direct and indirect damage in the short and long terms, as a result of the deterioration of soil quality, the pollution of water resources, and the disruption of agricultural supply chains.
He said that these effects are not limited to conflict zones but also extend to food security at the regional and international levels, leading to higher food prices and increased rates of food insecurity, especially in countries most dependent on imports. He added that this impact will ultimately affect everyone, in one way or another, given the interconnectedness of global food systems and the interconnectedness of supply chains.
In a comment to the Weekly, Abdel-Gawad Abu Kab, former spokesman of Egypt’s Environment Ministry, said that the world would pay the price for the current wars in the future, just as it is paying the price for irresponsible human activities today.
He said that the damage caused by wars is not limited to the destruction of infrastructure and the loss of thousands of lives but also extends to creating long-term effects that may last for decades, especially in the agricultural and food sectors, thus placing societies in a constant state of tension.
ENERGY IMPACTS: The US-Israeli strikes on Iran have disrupted supply routes through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of global oil flows. The US, Israel, and Iran have also all launched strikes on fossil fuel facilities, creating additional market shocks.
Reduced reliance on oil and gas is insulating some regions from the ongoing fuel crisis. “Electricity generated from wind and solar is largely insulated from fossil fuel price volatility — once built, the fuel is free,” said Jan Rosenow, a professor of energy at Oxford University in the UK.
But the war is also creating near-term challenges that could slow clean energy growth.
Climate advocates are calling for the world to grow its renewable energy capacity to boost energy independence in the wake of the war. Former US secretary of state John Kerry this month told the UK Guardian newspaper that oil and gas were a “security challenge”, while United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that “our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilising both the climate and global security.”
Some countries are indeed better positioned to withstand the current fuel crisis because of the growth of clean energy technologies. Spain and Portugal, for instance, have seen electricity prices decline in recent weeks.
Pakistan, too, has seen a surge in the deployment of rooftop solar panels over the past five years, helping the country weather disruptions in the oil and gas market. There, “households and businesses have discovered that rooftop solar coupled with batteries are cheaper than electricity imported from the grid,” Rosenow said.
Tendai Mbanji, a doctoral candidate in law at the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, offers an important analysis of the environmental and climatic impacts of modern warfare. He asserts that armed conflicts are no longer merely security or political crises, but have become direct catalysts for the degradation of ecosystems and the acceleration of climate change. He points out that targeting oil and petrochemical infrastructure, a recurring pattern in Middle Eastern conflicts, leads to the release of massive quantities of air pollutants, including soot, hydrocarbons, and heavy metals. This directly impacts air quality and leads to phenomena such as “black rain”, which carries toxic pollutants into the soil and water. In a more complex regional context, any military escalation between regional powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia — even if it falls short of a full-blown direct confrontation — carries transboundary environmental risks, given the region’s economies’ reliance on oil and the concentration of its energy infrastructure in environmentally sensitive areas.
Mbanji also points out that modern military operations, including air strikes, missile interceptions, and the use of drones, produce intense and sudden emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter — emissions that are not subject to any regulatory or accounting framework, unlike traditional industrial emissions. This pattern of “politically invisible emissions” exacerbates climate change without being accounted for in international commitments, creating a clear gap in the global climate governance system. This challenge is further complicated in marine environments, with the Arabian Gulf region being a particularly sensitive example. Any attack on oil tankers or shipping facilities could lead to large-scale oil spills, causing long-term damage to coral reefs and fish stocks, and threatening food security and the livelihoods of coastal communities. On the ground, Mbanji explains that the use of heavy munitions leaves a toxic legacy that lasts for decades. Heavy metals and chemicals accumulate in the soil and leach into groundwater, leading to a decline in agricultural production and widespread health risks among the population. The impact extends beyond the conflict period, continuing to undermine recovery and reconstruction efforts and transforming some areas into what are essentially “ecological dead zones” incapable of supporting life or economic activity. This is where Mbanji introduces the concept of “war as a climate multiplier”, where conflicts not only create new environmental crises but also exacerbate the fragility of existing systems and accelerate their collapse.
Policy could be shaped to encourage the green transition, with experts proposing a wide variety of schemes.
As reported by the Guardian, Rosenow called for governments to reform tax structures, for example. “Right now, electricity bears a disproportionate share of energy taxes in most countries, making it artificially expensive relative to gas,” he said, reporting on a widely discussed idea in Europe.
Gregor Semieniuk, a public policy and economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the US, said officials should impose a windfall tax on oil and gas companies amid the war.
“By taxing away excess profit — a windfall from war, rather than business acumen — governments can signal to financial investors and the industry itself that it’s not so extraordinarily profitable, and put less pressure on expanding production,” he said.
Governments could also subsidise materials like aluminum specifically for the buildout of renewables, he said. This could be difficult in the short term, but officials should take the opportunity to engage in “careful study” to see how to do so without “causing undue disruption”, Semieniuk said.
Officials could also work to ensure interest rates do not go up too high, potentially by imposing strategic short-term price controls, he said. But the best thing would be to end the disruptions outright.
“The most important policy is to end the conflict,” he said.
Though the war is creating incentives to boost fossil fuels, doing so would be shortsighted, said Kingsmill Bond, a strategist for the energy thinktank Ember.
“This is the first oil shock in history where oil faces a superior alternative. Solar, wind and EV are cheaper, local, faster to deploy, and huge,” he said. “They were winning even before the crisis, and this just galvanises change.”
In conclusion, it is no longer possible to view wars in isolation from their climatic and environmental impacts. Every armed conflict today leaves behind a heavy carbon footprint and a lasting environmental legacy that transcends geographical and temporal boundaries. Ignoring this dimension not only means overlooking one of the most serious consequences of conflicts but also reflects a structural flaw in our understanding of the relationship between security and sustainability. In a region like the Middle East, where energy and natural resource considerations are intertwined with geopolitical balances, the environmental cost of war is compounded, not only for the warring states but for the global ecosystem as a whole. Therefore, integrating the environmental dimension into conflict assessments and including military emissions and environmental damage within international accountability frameworks is no longer an option but an urgent necessity. The future of climate action will not only be decided in negotiating rooms, but also in our ability to curb the hidden effects of wars, before they turn into uncontainable environmental crises that threaten the stability of the planet and future generations.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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