The CIA calls it the “strategic commodity” of the Middle East. But it’s not referring to oil or natural gas. What the American spy agency has in mind is far more prosaic: drinking water. Don’t underestimate it, though, because if military hostilities continue to escalate, water could become the geopolitical commodity that decides the war between the US and Iran.

The Persian Gulf is gifted with a fabulous hydrocarbon endowment, worth trillions of dollars. What its desertic countries don’t have is water. From the 1970s onward, the oil money bought a solution: desalination plants. Today, the region relies on nearly 450 facilities to stop everyone going thirsty.

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