Six weeks of bombardment targeting energy infrastructure in Iran and the Gulf have renewed examination of a consequence of modern warfare that persists long after ceasefires are signed: the environmental and public health damage caused by strikes on oil facilities, refineries, and fuel depots — damage that, according to analysts and UN data, can contaminate communities for generations.
Felix Horne, a senior researcher writing in Al Jazeera on May 23, 2026, argues that the current conflict’s environmental toll is already visible. Burning fuel tanks are releasing toxic particles into the air, while debris, chemical run-off, and oil residues are threatening coastal waters and marine ecosystems across the Gulf. Al Jazeera reported on May 8, 2026, that a satellite image captured a likely oil spill covering dozens of square kilometres near Iran’s Kharg Island, a major crude export terminal.
Fossil Fuels as Weapons of Environmental Destruction
The pattern is not new. During the 1991 Gulf War, retreating Iraqi forces set fire to more than 600 Kuwaiti oil wells. For months, dense smoke blanketed the region, contaminating soil and groundwater across the Gulf and producing what Horne describes as “a generation of health consequences.” The United Nations Compensation Commission subsequently ruled much of that destruction compensable harm, with Iraq ultimately paying more than $50 billion for damage linked to oil fires, marine pollution, and ecosystem loss, according to the Commission’s records.
Fossil fuel systems are especially catastrophic targets in wartime precisely because they concentrate combustible fuels and hazardous chemicals in single locations. When oil depots, refineries, or pipelines are struck, they release toxic gases, carcinogenic particles, and chemical residues that contaminate surrounding land and water for years. The health consequences for nearby populations — respiratory illness, elevated cancer rates, and groundwater contamination — frequently outlast the political conflicts that caused them.
“Pollution caused by war can settle over cities, contaminate water and soil, and shape public health long after the fighting is over,” Horne wrote in Al Jazeera.
Ukraine: A Living Laboratory of War’s Environmental Cost
Ukraine has provided the starkest recent evidence of the phenomenon. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, UN agencies and Ukrainian environmental organisations have documented thousands of incidents of environmental harm, according to Al Jazeera. These include fires at oil facilities, deforestation, contamination from damaged industrial sites, and widespread risks to water systems.
Conflict compounds these harms by eroding the governance structures that normally limit them. When state authority collapses in active war zones, environmental regulation and corporate accountability tend to collapse alongside it. Communities living in the shadow of fossil fuel infrastructure are left to absorb pollution and health harms that no official body is actively monitoring or addressing.
The dynamic is visible in Yemen and Sudan as well. Routine maintenance on oil pipelines has become increasingly difficult in volatile security environments in both countries, resulting in contaminated water supplies and damaged farmland, Al Jazeera reported. In Yemen, years of conflict left the FSO Safer — a decaying supertanker moored off the Hudaydah coast — without maintenance, posing what international officials warned could be one of the worst potential oil spills in history. An emergency transfer operation eventually removed the oil in 2023, averting the disaster only after years of international advocacy and fundraising.
Military Emissions: The Carbon Cost No One Counts
The environmental cost of modern warfare extends beyond chemical contamination. Militaries were responsible for an estimated 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2022, according to research cited by Horne in Al Jazeera, largely from the burning of high-carbon fossil fuels in aircraft, naval vessels, and armoured vehicles. That figure does not include the emissions generated by burning targeted infrastructure.
Critically, military emissions are not comprehensively included in international climate accounting frameworks. The United States has historically pushed for this exemption in climate negotiations, and it has held. As military spending surges globally — driven by conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and escalating tensions in the Indo-Pacific — so too does a carbon footprint that international agreements are not designed to measure or cap.
When electricity collapses in war zones and conventional fuels become scarce, civilian populations often turn to charcoal and firewood for cooking and heating, accelerating deforestation in already fragile areas. In Sudan, researchers have tracked significant loss of tree cover around Khartoum and other urban centres since the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces began in April 2023 — tree cover that, Al Jazeera noted, performs important ecosystem functions including groundwater retention.
Reconstruction Adds Another Layer of Harm
The environmental damage does not end when fighting stops. Bombardment reduces buildings, roads, and industrial sites to rubble, releasing dust laced with silica, heavy metals, and other toxins that scar lungs and aggravate chronic respiratory disease. Reconstructing destroyed cities then generates a second surge of carbon emissions: cement and steel production are among the most carbon-intensive industrial processes on Earth.
“Rebuilding destroyed cities adds another climate burden,” Horne wrote. “Cement and steel production are among the most carbon-intensive industrial processes in the world, meaning reconstruction often generates another surge of emissions embedded in new concrete and infrastructure.”
The argument carries direct policy implications for post-conflict reconstruction planning. Horne notes that energy systems rebuilt around oil storage, gas pipelines, and centralised fuel infrastructure remain permanently exposed — both to environmental catastrophe if struck again, and to global price shocks whenever conflict threatens major supply routes such as the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant share of global oil exports flows.
Does the Energy Mix Matter for Post-War Recovery?
Researchers studying the environmental legacy of warfare have increasingly focused on whether the kind of energy infrastructure rebuilt after conflict determines the extent of long-term harm. Renewable energy systems can be damaged in conflict, but their environmental footprint when destroyed is fundamentally different in character.
“A destroyed solar installation does not spill crude into rivers, and a damaged wind turbine does not ignite refinery-scale fires or release toxic benzene into nearby neighbourhoods,” Horne wrote in Al Jazeera.
More distributed renewable grids cannot eliminate the risks of war, but, according to Horne, they can reduce both the toxic aftermath and the global economic disruption that follows when centralised fossil fuel infrastructure is struck. Whether post-conflict reconstruction in Iran, Yemen, Ukraine, and Sudan moves toward that model will, in part, determine how long the pollution generated by current and recent wars continues to affect the people who live near it.
Background
The environmental consequences of warfare received international legal recognition through the UN Compensation Commission established after the 1991 Gulf War, which paid out more than $50 billion in claims. The FSO Safer oil tanker crisis in Yemen — resolved only in 2023 after years of failed negotiations — became a case study in how conflict prevents the maintenance needed to avoid environmental catastrophe. Ukraine’s war-related environmental damage has been tracked since February 2022 by UN agencies, with thousands of documented pollution incidents. International climate agreements have not yet found a mechanism to capture military emissions, which research estimates at 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas output annually.
What Happens Next
Environmental monitoring groups, including UN agencies, are expected to keep tracking pollution events in Iran and the Gulf as the conflict in the region continues. Legal frameworks for assigning liability and compensation for war-related environmental damage — modelled on the UN Compensation Commission precedent — will likely face renewed calls for activation once active hostilities end. Reconstruction planning for all current conflict zones will force governments and international donors to decide whether rebuilt energy infrastructure follows fossil fuel or renewable models, a decision with direct consequences for long-term environmental risk.
