War had already darkened Tehran’s skies by 8 March. When rain began to fall, residents said it was thick, foul-smelling and dark in colour. Some described it as black rain, coating streets, rooftops and cars in soot-like residue.
That night, Israel had struck oil facilities in Iran. The scale of the attacks and the fires that followed were so significant that US officials later questioned their strategic rationale.
But the damage has not stopped there. From smoke over Fujairah and oil risks in Gulf waters to burned farmland and contamination fears in southern Lebanon, the environmental toll of conflict is spreading across the wider region.
A growing body of open-source evidence, satellite imagery, social media footage and official statements points to an unfolding ecological crisis across Iran, the Gulf and Lebanon. The picture emerging is a multi-front assault on the environment: on land, at sea and in the air.
WIRED Middle East explores how war damages the environment, and why the effects last long after the fighting stops.
Some impacts are visible in smoke, spills and rubble. Others are harder to see. The first two weeks of the war alone unleashed more than 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Researchers estimate that each missile strike releases roughly 0.14 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, about the same as driving a car for 350 miles. That includes emissions from the strike itself and the embodied carbon tied to the missile’s production and supply chain.
Those emissions do not come only from weapons. They also come from aircraft sorties, naval operations, fires, fuel consumption and reconstruction. Some damage can be counted in emissions. Much of it is physical, local and harder to fully measure while the war is still unfolding.
It’s often said that the environment is war’s silent victim. Seven weeks after hostilities against Iran began, and as the world marks Earth Day, it is once again paying a devastating price.
Land
According to Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS), more than 50,000 housing units were destroyed or damaged within about 45 days of war, including 17,756 destroyed and 32,668 damaged units, AFP reported.
Across Iran, 7,645 buildings have been destroyed in the war, according to satellite damage assessments by Conflict Ecology, a geospatial research lab at the University of Oregon. In Tehran alone, more than 1,200 buildings were destroyed, including military facilities.
But destroyed structures are only the visible part of the toll. Contamination in soil, water and debris is often slower to detect and harder to quantify.
Antoine Kallab, a policy adviser and academic who has studied environmental damage in Lebanon, says conflict reshapes ecosystems. “Any active war that leads to displacement, where people are forced to leave their communities and agricultural lands, definitely has an impact on the environment,” he says.
Damage to urban infrastructure can drive longer-term pollution, while rubble and debris persist long after smoke clears. “Once a bomb goes off, it creates smoke which dissipates, but something like the debris that contains toxic material stays, and it can be very, very dangerous as it can mix into the soil, changing its quality, or mix with the water.”
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