The war has already happened by March 8, Tehran’s skies darkened. When it started raining, residents said it was hefty, foul-smelling and murky in color. Some described it as black rain covering streets, roofs and cars with a soot-like residue.
That night, Israel attacked over 30 oil facilities in Iran. The scale of the attacks and the fires that followed were so significant that later U.S. officials he questioned their strategy rationale.
But the damage didn’t end there. From smoke over Fujairah and oil threats in the waters of the Persian Gulf to burned farmlands and contamination fears in southern Lebanon, the environmental impacts of the conflict are spreading across the wider region.
A growing body of open source evidence, satellite imagery, social media footage and official statements point to a growing ecological crisis in Iran, the Persian Gulf and Lebanon. The emerging picture is one of a multi-front attack on the environment: on land, at sea and in the air.
Some impacts are apparent in the form of smoke, spills and debris. Others are harder to see. The first two weeks of the war began over 5 million tons carbon dioxide equivalent.
Scientists estimate that each rocket impact releases about 0.14 tons of CO22 about the same as driving a car for 350 miles. This includes emissions from the impact itself and the embodied carbon associated with the production and supply chain of the rocket.
These emissions don’t just come from weapons. They also come from aircraft combat flights, naval operations, fires, fuel consumption and reconstruction. Some damage can be counted in emissions. Most of them are physical, local, and harder to fully measure when the war is still going on.
It is often said that the environment is the still victim of war. Seven weeks after the start of hostilities against Iran, and as the world celebrates Earth Day, it is once again paying a devastating price.
Ground
According to Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS), over 50,000 dwellings were destroyed or damaged in approximately 45 days of the war, including 17,756 destroyed and 32,668 damaged, She informed AFP.
There are 7,645 buildings in all of Iran was destroyed according to satellite damage assessments conducted by Confused Ecology, a geospatial research laboratory at the University of Oregon. In Tehran alone, over 1,200 buildings were destroyed, including military facilities.
However, the destroyed structures are only the apparent part of the victims. Soil, water and debris contamination is often slower to detect and harder to quantify.
Antoine Kallab, a policy adviser and academic who has studied environmental damage in Lebanon, says conflicts change ecosystems. “Any active war that leads to displacement, where people are forced to leave their communities and farmland, certainly has an impact on the environment,” he says.
Damage to urban infrastructure can cause long-term pollution, with rubble and debris remaining long after the smoke has cleared. “When a bomb explodes, it creates smoke that dissipates, but something like debris containing toxic substances remains and can be very, very dangerous because it can mix with the soil, change the quality of the soil or mix with the water.”
The scale is solemn. Kallab says Lebanon generated between 15 and 20 million tons of debris in just three months during the previous war with Israel in 2024 – as much as the country would have produced in about 20 years of peacetime.
Rubble is not indifferent. When buildings are bombed or bulldozed, debris can release plastics, solvents, insulating fibers, bulky metals, asbestos and other contaminants into the surrounding soil and water. The environmental impact is worse when houses, roads, water mains and sanitation systems collapse with them.