Mideast crisis raises environmental fears

In between Israeli bombardments of Lebanon and the fallout from Washington and Tel Aviv's joint strikes on Iran across the Middle East, Najib Saab and his team at the Arab Forum for Environment and Development, drastically reduced their operations until the shift to work online became inevitable.

Though the setup may feel like the COVID-19 pandemic all over again, the secretary-general of AFED, a not-for-profit NGO promoting environmental policies and programs across the Arab region, said that their office in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, suffered damage twice recently because of nearby explosions.

"We live between one disaster and another," he said. "We depend 90 percent on private generator for electricity, at very high cost now due to increasing fuel prices."

The United States and Israel began their attacks on Iran on Feb 28, including a strike hitting the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab in the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan, killing 175 including dozens of schoolgirls, according to the Time Magazine. Since then, Tehran has responded with retaliatory action.

As both sides engaged in tit-for-tat strikes across the region with civilian and energy infrastructure bearing the brunt of the damages, concerns are growing over the ecological harm and public health risks.

On March 7, thick smoke covered Tehran's skies after Israeli air strikes hit oil facilities and killed at least four people. World Health Organization spokesperson Christian Lindmeier warned on March 10 that the "black rain" that fell on Tehran after the strikes "is indeed a danger" for Iranians and advised people to stay indoors.

Lindmeier also said Iranian strikes on oil infrastructure in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia raised concerns of "wider regional pollution exposure", highlighting the long-term effects of pollutants, which affect respiratory health and contaminate water.

On March 16, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called Israel's bombings of fuel depots in Tehran "ecocide" and demanded that Israel be "punished for its war crimes".

Saab, from AFED, said he believes people's exposure to toxic substances amid the conflict would have effects "continuing for decades after the war ends", which currently shows no signs of abating.

"The ultimate goal is to control natural resources, not to free people from dictatorships, as promoted by the US and Israel," he said.

What makes it more dangerous, he said, is that the main players on all sides "rely on fundamentalist ideologies to muster support among their fanatic popular base from extreme Zionists and their evangelical disciples in Israel and the US, to the theocratic regimes on the opposite side, turning the conflict into a sort of holy war".

"This leads warring parties in this conflict to grossly disregard all traditional rules governing wars and international humanitarian laws," Saab said.

"What complicates matters further is the US administration's view of the world as pure real estate opportunities, regardless of national and human rights of people.

"This is precisely demonstrated in the attacks on energy and power facilities initiated on Iran, which triggered counterattacks on energy installations in Arab countries hosting US military presence."

He said the situation may become more dangerous if seawater desalination plants in the Gulf Arab countries are targeted by bombing or their operations disrupted by massive oil pollution.

"This threatens the very survival of millions, as some countries do not have alternative sources of fresh water other than desalination."

Rumaitha Al Busaidi, vice-president of the Environment Society of Oman, said that the environmental cost of this conflict operates on two timescales.