Black Rain and Oil Slicks - The War in Iran
- Richard
- 16 minutes ago
- 5 min read
On the weekend of 7–8 March 2026, residents of Tehran looked up to see something deeply unsettling falling from the sky: black rain. Soot-laden droplets, heavy with toxic particles, were raining down on a city of nine million people - the result of Israeli strikes on around 30 oil processing and storage facilities across Iran. It was a visceral, unforgettable image of what conflict does to the environment. But it was just one piece of a much larger, much darker picture unfolding across the Persian Gulf and beyond.
The war - launched under the name "Operation Epic Fury" - has triggered what environmental researchers are now calling an emerging ecological catastrophe. The Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS), which has been tracking incidents using satellite imagery and verified media footage, had identified over 300 environmentally relevant incidents by 10 March alone. The scope is staggering: strikes recorded in Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Jordan, Cyprus, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Azerbaijan. And crucially, the pattern is shifting - from initial military targets to civilian and dual-use infrastructure, including the oil and gas facilities that power the global economy.
Oil on Fire
The most immediately visible damage has come from strikes on fossil fuel infrastructure. Iran controls a substantial share of global oil and gas production, and those facilities have been deliberately targeted. The Tehran oil fires of 7–8 March are the most dramatic example, but they are far from isolated. Iran's Ras Tanurah refinery equivalent in Saudi Arabia was struck on 2 March, and the UAE's Fujairah Port was hit the following day. Both incidents generated massive smoke plumes visible from space, laden with particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and toxic organic compounds including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
Cities caught downwind of these strikes face serious public health crises, not just in the immediate term but potentially for years. Tehran's geography makes things worse - the Alborz mountain range encircles the city and regularly traps pollution in the urban bowl, while high-rise buildings block wind dispersal. The nine million people living there have been exposed to conflict-generated toxins they have no means of escaping.
Qatar, meanwhile, has shut down liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and warned it may halt all energy exports. Iraq, Israel and Kuwait have all reported disruptions. The Strait of Hormuz - through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil normally passes - has been effectively blockaded, with only vessels carrying Iranian connections reported to be passing by early March.
A Marine Disaster in Slow Motion
Beneath the smoke, a quieter environmental crisis is building at sea. The US has stated its intention to "annihilate" Iran's navy, and by early March had reportedly damaged or sunk more than 43 Iranian naval vessels, attacking military port infrastructure around Bandar Abbas and Konarak. Sunken ships and destroyed port facilities release fuels, oils, ammunition residues and other hazardous materials directly into the water.
The consequences are already reaching far beyond the Gulf. The Iranian frigate Dena was torpedoed near the coast of Sri Lanka, leaving a 20-kilometre-long oil slick threatening ecologically important coastal areas. Sri Lankan authorities have begun clean-up operations. Meanwhile, at least 12 merchant ships have been struck in ports or in the Persian Gulf itself. At the outset of the conflict, around 150 crude and LNG tankers were anchored in the Gulf - sitting targets in a war zone. Greenpeace has described the situation as a "disaster waiting to happen," warning that a major spill in the Gulf's shallow, semi-enclosed waters could devastate coral reefs, fisheries and coastal ecosystems that millions of people depend on for food and livelihoods.
Widespread electromagnetic jamming across the Gulf has made the situation even more volatile, disrupting ships' navigation and communication systems and dramatically increasing collision risk.
Toxic Residues That Will Outlast the War
Beyond fire and oil, there is a category of environmental harm that rarely makes headlines but endures long after the guns fall silent: toxic contamination from military sites and munitions. The majority of initial US and Israeli strikes targeted missile bases, airbases, naval facilities and weapons depots. These sites store and use some extraordinarily hazardous materials.
Iran operates both solid- and liquid-fuelled ballistic missiles. Some liquid propellants - including unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and inhibited red fuming nitric acid used in SCUD-type systems - are highly toxic and have proven extremely difficult to manage in other conflict settings. When these sites are struck and fires break out, they don't cleanly destroy all hazardous material. Instead, they scatter it. CEOBS researchers note that likely contaminants from struck military facilities include fuels, heavy metals, energetic compounds and PFAS ("forever chemicals"), with fires additionally generating dioxins and furans.
Unexploded ordnance is another long-tail problem. Compounds like TNT, RDX and HMX are chemically stable enough to remain in soil and groundwater for decades. RDX can be taken up by crops and bioaccumulate through food chains. The US EPA classifies TNT as a possible human carcinogen. High concentrations of these compounds are still being found at World War I battle sites - a sobering reminder of how long war leaves its mark on the earth.
The Nuclear and Water Wildcards
Two additional threats deserve serious concern. First, nuclear facilities: Iran's Natanz enrichment plant was targeted on 2 March. The IAEA initially reported no damage, then confirmed "damage to entrance buildings" of the underground facility. No radioactive release was anticipated in that instance, but the risk remains real. Other known enrichment sites at Isfahan and Fordow, and the broader uncertainty around Iran's nuclear infrastructure following restricted IAEA inspections since last year, mean the situation remains deeply uncertain. Strikes on even partially operational nuclear facilities carry potentially catastrophic environmental consequences.
Second, water. Around 450 desalination plants supply drinking water to approximately 100 million people across the Gulf. Both Iran and Bahrain have accused each other of striking desalination infrastructure. These plants use chemicals including sodium hypochlorite, ferric chloride and sulfuric acid, and any serious disruption doesn't just endanger public health - it could trigger mass displacement, with devastating downstream consequences for both people and ecosystems.
Governance Collapse and the Long Aftermath
Environmental governance in Iran was already weak before the war, with chronic problems including biodiversity loss, land degradation, water mismanagement and persistent oil pollution. Armed conflict typically makes all of this worse. Environmental ministries are under-resourced and deprioritised in war and its aftermath. Environmental civil society - already severely constrained in Iran - faces further suppression. The communities, scientists and advocates who would normally push for clean-up and accountability are silenced.
This matters enormously. Past conflicts - from the Gulf War's oil fires of 1991 to the ongoing environmental fallout in Ukraine - have shown that harm not documented is harm not remediated. CEOBS has launched a dedicated wartime incident database (WISEN) for this conflict, following the model used in Ukraine, precisely to ensure that environmental damage is recorded and can be pursued through accountability mechanisms.
War's Hidden Legacy
It is tempting to view environmental damage as a secondary consequence of war - something to worry about once the fighting stops. But the Iran conflict makes clear that ecological destruction is not a side effect; it is happening in real time, at scale, affecting millions of people right now through poisoned air, contaminated water and threatened food supplies.
The war also arrives at the worst possible moment for the planet's climate trajectory. Every barrel of oil burning in a bombed refinery, every tanker leaking crude into the Gulf, every decade of toxic residues seeping into groundwater - all of it compounds the environmental debt we are already struggling to repay. When we talk about sustainability and climate action, we have to be honest: war is among the most destructive forces the environment faces. The Iran conflict is not just a geopolitical crisis. It is an environmental one - and it demands to be recognised as such.
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