Can Iran’s environment be saved?

Israeli strikes in recent days have hit Iran’s two main petrochemical hubs, Mahshahr and Assaluyeh, while US President Donald Trump has warned that further attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure could follow if no deal is reached by Tuesday night.

Iranian authorities said Monday that industrial facilities in the Mahshahr petrochemical zone are being evacuated ahead of Trump’s deadline.

On Saturday, April 4, Israeli forces targeted at least eight major petrochemical complexes in the Mahshahr region, along with critical supporting infrastructure, including power plants that supply electricity to the industrial zone.

Two days later, similar strikes hit the vast petrochemical facilities in Assaluyeh, the center of Iran’s South Pars gas and petrochemical operations.

Although the full extent of the damage remains unclear, Iranian officials have acknowledged that operations in both regions have been halted.

Mahshahr accounts for approximately 28 percent of Iran’s petrochemical production, while Assaluyeh contributes more than 48 percent. Together, the two hubs represent roughly three-quarters of the country’s total petrochemical output.

Iran’s petrochemical industry is the second-largest source of export revenue after crude oil. The country has a nominal production capacity of about 95 million tons per year, although actual output is closer to 75 million tons due to persistent shortages of electricity and natural gas.

Around half of this production—valued at approximately $13 billion annually—is exported, accounting for more than one-fifth of Iran’s non-oil exports.

The shutdown of these facilities therefore represents more than a temporary industrial setback. It directly threatens one of Iran’s most important sources of foreign currency earnings.

If the damaged infrastructure cannot be restored in the medium term, the second-largest producer of petrochemicals in the Middle East could even face shortages.

Over the past decades, Iran has invested an estimated $70 billion in developing petrochemical infrastructure. In the event of severe damage, rebuilding these facilities would pose a major financial and technical challenge.

Given the constraints imposed by sanctions, limited access to international capital and broader economic pressures, Iran is unlikely to have the resources required for rapid reconstruction.

Even if external financing were secured, restoring production capacity would take years, and possibly more than a decade.

Petrochemical plants are highly complex systems that depend not only on physical infrastructure but also on stable energy supply, advanced technology and efficient logistics networks—all of which are currently under strain in Iran.

The strikes on petrochemical facilities come alongside recent attacks on major steel plants in Isfahan and Khuzestan, which together account for roughly half of Iran’s steel output. Taken together, the pattern suggests a broader strategy aimed at weakening Iran’s industrial backbone rather than targeting isolated sectors.

The timing of these strikes is particularly significant given Iran’s pre-existing structural weaknesses.

In recent years, the country has faced chronic shortages of natural gas, electricity and refined fuels, forcing many industries to operate well below capacity. These constraints have already reduced industrial output and increased production costs.

At the same time, Iran’s logistics sector suffers from deep inefficiencies. According to World Bank data, the country ranks near the bottom in regional logistics performance, second only to Afghanistan. This limits Iran’s ability to reroute supply chains, manage disruptions or quickly recover from large-scale damage to infrastructure.

The combined effect of these factors could push Iran into a deeper economic crisis. A sustained disruption in petrochemical exports would significantly reduce foreign currency inflows, putting additional pressure on the national currency and exacerbating inflation.

Ultimately, the burden of this crisis will fall disproportionately on ordinary Iranians who are already struggling with high inflation, energy shortages and rising unemployment.

If Trump follows through on his threat, the conflict could move further into the economic domain, reshaping the trajectory of Iran’s economy and potentially sending shockwaves through regional—and even global—energy markets.

Trump warned on Sunday that if the Strait of Hormuz is not opened by Tuesday, the United States could target Iran’s power plants and bridges.

Tehran has responded defiantly, warning that the Strait of Hormuz will not return to normal and signaling that it would retaliate if critical infrastructure were attacked.

Iran’s electricity system relies overwhelmingly on thermal power plants, most of them fueled by natural gas. A relatively small number of large facilities supply major urban and industrial centers, including Tehran and other key regions.

Among the most prominent facilities is the Damavand combined-cycle power plant east of Tehran, one of the country’s largest electricity producers and a key supplier to the capital’s metropolitan area.

Other large plants, including Neka on the Caspian coast and Shahid Montazeri near Isfahan, also play central roles in the national grid.

Strikes could temporarily remove large amounts of generating capacity without requiring prolonged bombing campaigns.

Inside Iran

Even limited damage to several major facilities could lead to rolling blackouts across large parts of the country.

Hospitals depend on stable power for life-support equipment and medical systems. Water pumping and treatment facilities require electricity to maintain supply, while telecommunications networks, factories and transport systems all rely on uninterrupted energy.

Iran’s economy is already under pressure from sanctions, high inflation and environmental challenges such as drought. Large-scale power disruptions could deepen these strains, affecting everything from factories to household water supplies.

Because many components used in large power plants must be imported, repairing damaged facilities could also take time, particularly under existing sanctions and trade restrictions.

Regional retaliation

Iran has signaled that it would respond proportionally if its energy infrastructure were attacked.

Regional energy systems present obvious targets. Persian Gulf oil facilities, desalination plants that supply drinking water to major cities and Israeli infrastructure could all become potential objectives in a cycle of reciprocal strikes.

Tehran could also retaliate through allied groups. Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen have both demonstrated the ability to target infrastructure and shipping routes, raising the possibility that attacks could spread beyond Iran itself.

Once energy systems become targets, they become shared vulnerabilities across the region.

A dangerous precedent

Targeting power plants also raises legal and ethical questions.

Electricity systems support civilian life, even if they may also serve military needs. International humanitarian law places limits on attacks against civilian infrastructure when the harm to civilians could be disproportionate to military advantage.

Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that strikes on power systems can have cascading humanitarian effects, particularly in densely populated areas.

The threat to strike Iran’s electricity grid reflects a broader shift in modern conflict, where infrastructure itself increasingly becomes a tool of coercion.

While such attacks may promise short-term strategic leverage, they also risk opening a cycle of infrastructure warfare. Energy systems, water facilities, ports and communications networks could all become targets in a conflict that spreads beyond traditional military objectives.

In a region already marked by volatility, that shift could transform a localized confrontation into a broader and more unpredictable struggle in which societies themselves, rather than armies, become the pressure points of war.

Global impact

At the center of the confrontation remains the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints.

Roughly 20 million barrels of oil pass through the narrow waterway each day—about a fifth of global seaborne oil trade. Any prolonged disruption could push oil prices sharply higher and ripple through global supply chains.

Insurance costs for shipping could rise, tanker traffic could fall and energy-importing economies, particularly in Asia, could face new supply shocks.

Oil prices reflected those fears at the start of the trading week, with crude jumping at market open Monday as the confrontation intensified.

Analysts warn prices could rise significantly further if the conflict escalates or if shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted.

Earlier this week, UAE authorities detained dozens of money changers tied to financial entities linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, shut down associated companies and closed their offices, sources familiar with the matter told Iran International.

The crackdown followed days of mounting regional tensions and came after other measures targeting Iranian nationals, including visa revocations and tighter travel restrictions through Dubai.

While the initial crackdown appears focused on exchange houses and foreign-currency procurement, the bigger question now is whether Emirati authorities are prepared to move deeper into the far larger ecosystem of front companies and free-zone entities that have long enabled Iran’s oil, petrochemical, metals and procurement networks.

That next step could determine whether this is a structural threat to one of Tehran’s most important offshore financial systems.

“It’s unclear, I think we’ve got to wait and see the extent of the crackdown,” Miad Maleki, former senior US Treasury sanctions strategist and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) said on Eye for Iran podcast.

“If it only has to do with the current crackdown....whether it’s really limited to IRGC's foreign currency procurement activities in Dubai, which is significant or it goes beyond that and they’re going after Iranian connected companies in free zones," said Maleki.

That distinction matters.

For years, Dubai’s exchange houses were only the most visible layer of Iran’s shadow economy. Beneath them sits a much deeper network of shell firms, nominee ownership structures, commodity brokers and free-zone companies often run by third-country nationals.

According to Maleki, many of those firms were designed precisely to hide any direct Iranian fingerprints.

“Usually, the connections to Iran are nothing. There are no Iranian hands or fingerprints over these companies,” he said.

“There are third country nationals, Indians and Pakistani nationals who are running these companies and you have an Emirati national who is only on paper as the owner.”

That architecture has allowed Iranian petrochemical, petroleum and metals businessmen to move funds, settle transactions and procure goods while remaining beyond the immediate reach of sanctions enforcement.

Daniel Roth, research director at United Against Nuclear Iran, said the sophistication of those structures is exactly what makes the next phase of enforcement so consequential.

“It has been a sophisticated operation to the extent that anybody working in just the general compliance AML unit, say in the west wouldn’t necessarily know that this is,” Roth said on Eye for Iran.

He warned that seemingly generic corporate branding can make sanctions-linked entities difficult to detect.

“If I’m going to be a little bit more clever than that, and obviously I’m getting to use a name like some generic name, some boilerplate name.”

Roth added that the opacity of Dubai’s business ecosystem has historically made ownership trails difficult to establish.

“The Dubai environment or the financial system, it is quite opaque.”

That opacity becomes even more important when looking beyond money changers and toward the free-zone corporate structures that may still remain untouched.

Mohammad Machine-Chian, a senior journalist covering economic affairs at Iran International, said the economic stakes of a broader move into shell companies could be enormous.

“So all in all, I think it’s fair to estimate around $8 to maybe $15 billion a year,” he said, referring to the Dubai channel’s role in supplying hard currency.

“In this scenario, they’re expected to lose much more, maybe between at least $15 to $20 billion.”

If authorities expand the crackdown into those deeper layers, the consequences for Tehran could extend far beyond exchange houses.

It would raise the cost of moving oil proceeds, complicate hard-currency conversion, threaten procurement channels, and strike at the free-zone companies that have long helped disguise Iranian-linked exports.

For now, that remains the unanswered question.

The arrests have exposed the first layer of Iran’s financial architecture in Dubai.

Whether the UAE is prepared to absorb the economic and political costs of moving against the deeper shell-company maze may determine whether Tehran’s most important offshore pressure valve is merely disrupted or fundamentally dismantled.

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To be born a scientist in the Middle East, and particularly in Iran, is to inherit constraints that shape your education, your mobility and often your sense of belonging long before you publish your first paper.

For many students, the obstacles begin early. Access to higher education can depend on geography, religion, ethnicity or family background. Certain research topics are restricted. Background checks are routine. Resources are uneven.

These constraints do not extinguish ambition. Many of the most driven students I have met from the region have worked relentlessly to overcome barriers that would discourage others. A significant number succeed in gaining admission to leading universities abroad, often ranking among the strongest in their cohorts.

But leaving does not mean leaving politics behind.

Students from Iran and other parts of the Middle East frequently undergo additional security screening when applying for visas or research permits in Western countries. Even when governments recognise the vulnerability of marginalised groups, the bureaucratic process can be prolonged and uncertain. Delays disrupt research timelines, funding and family life.

For a graduate student on a fixed stipend, uncertainty is not an abstraction. It is rent, tuition and the ticking clock of a degree.

Once abroad, the challenges evolve rather than disappear entirely. Family, friends and history bind students to their countries of origin. Political upheaval, internet shutdowns, military escalation or widespread protests reverberate across continents.

During periods of unrest, many students feel a moral obligation to support loved ones financially and emotionally. They spend hours each day checking the news, supporting movements on social media, translating information, sending money and making calls at odd hours.

Research suffers. Sleep suffers. Concentration suffers. The entire laboratory feels the impact when one member is under acute stress.

Political manipulation and disinformation can deepen divisions within diaspora communities, leading to heated disputes that further isolate students already under strain.

I have lived through several such cycles as a graduate student and now as a professor. Today I receive daily messages from students—via email, on social media or during meetings—asking for advice. My guidance is simple, though not easy to follow: help where you can, avoid corrosive debates and focus on your research and your long-term goals.

This tension between civic conscience and scientific focus is what I think of as a form of geographic discrimination. Events far beyond one’s control can disrupt internet access, travel, funding and collaboration, affecting thousands of scientists across the globe simply because of where they were born.

The current conflict involving Iran, Israel and the United States illustrates this clearly. Universities and schools have closed. Conferences and workshops have been postponed or cancelled. Laboratories face interruptions, whether from direct damage, security restrictions or the displacement of staff and students.

Even when military actions are described as targeted, research institutes and surrounding civilian infrastructure are not immune to the shock.

Recent strike damage near civilian educational facilities in Iran, which cost the lives of 160 students, and the previous attack on the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel are reminders that scientific ecosystems are fragile. Rebuilding infrastructure takes years. Rebuilding trust and a sense of safety can take longer.

The long-term cost is not measured only in damaged buildings or delayed experiments. It is measured in lost collaborations, abandoned projects and the quiet departure of talented young people who decide that stability matters more than prestige.

Science thrives on openness, mobility and sustained concentration. War undermines all three.

When we speak about geopolitical conflict, we often focus on borders, strategy and power. We speak less about research teams fractured by forces entirely outside their control.

If we value scientific progress, we must recognise how deeply it depends on the human beings who carry it forward. For many scientists from the Middle East, war is not a distant headline. It is an interruption that follows them into the laboratory and into the quiet hours when research demands clarity of mind.

Protecting science, in times of conflict, means protecting them as well.

A series of recent economic measures taken by the UAE following Iranian attacks on Emirati infrastructure has exposed how deeply Iran’s external trade depends on Dubai’s role as a financial and logistical gateway.

The steps—ranging from restrictions on Iranian nationals to disruptions in financial and trade channels—highlight both the extent of interdependence between the two economies and the vulnerabilities that accompany it.

Iran’s consulate in Dubai confirmed that more than 1,200 Iranians were repatriated through indirect routes via Armenia and Afghanistan after direct travel links were suspended.

More consequential than these immediate measures, however, is the disruption of bilateral trade flows. The UAE is Iran’s second-largest trading partner after China and serves as a critical gateway for imports.

No container ships have been seen crossing from Emirati ports to Iran since the start of the conflict, according to Rebecca Gerdes, an analyst at data company Kpler.

According to official data, Emirati exports to Iran rose from about $5.2 billion in 2018—when the United States withdrew from the nuclear deal—to roughly $23 billion in recent years, accounting for more than one-third of Iran’s total imports.

Iran’s non-oil exports to the UAE have also grown, rising from $5.7 billion to nearly $8 billion.

Data from Kpler, seen by Iran International, indicates that Iran exports about 160,000 barrels per day of fuel oil (mazut) to the UAE, along with smaller volumes of other petroleum products such as LPG.

Services trade constitutes another vital channel. Iran imports roughly $23 billion in services annually—including logistics, engineering, insurance and trade facilitation—of which the UAE accounts for about 22 percent.

A substantial portion of this economic relationship also operates outside formal channels. Iran is estimated to import more than $20 billion worth of smuggled goods each year, much of it routed through the UAE.

Dubai has also served as a key node for currency exchange networks, document falsification related to oil shipments and other mechanisms used to circumvent international sanctions. Iranian exchange houses have played a central role in facilitating these activities.

Recent reports suggest that dozens of exchange operators with alleged links to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been detained in the UAE as tensions escalated. While the full scope of these actions remains unclear, they point to a broader effort by Emirati authorities to tighten enforcement and limit illicit financial flows.

Iran’s recent military actions have targeted multiple locations in the UAE, including Fujairah—the country’s only oil export terminal outside the Strait of Hormuz—raising concerns about energy security and trade continuity.

A recent Goldman Sachs report warned that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz could reduce the UAE’s GDP by as much as 6 percent in April alone, underscoring the broader regional economic risks posed by the conflict.

Yet the same dynamics also expose Iran’s vulnerabilities. The UAE’s role as a commercial, financial and logistical hub makes it difficult to replace in the short term.

Few countries possess the infrastructure, geographic proximity and established trade networks required to replicate Dubai’s function in Iran’s economic ecosystem.

Whether the UAE’s response becomes a decisive pressure point for Iran will depend on both the duration and the breadth of the restrictions.

In the short term, disruptions to trade, finance and logistics are likely to raise costs and complicate supply chains for Iranian importers. Over the longer term, sustained constraints could push Tehran to diversify routes and partners, though replacing the UAE’s role would be neither quick nor straightforward.

For now, the trajectory of tensions suggests that friction with the UAE may emerge as one of the most consequential external challenges to Iran’s trade architecture long after the current conflict subsides.