Trump’s War With Iran Is Also a Climate War

Fossil fuels are structurally embedded in modern warfare.

War makes climate change worse in many ways, and vice versa. The human costs of the U.S.-Israel attack on Iran—the hundreds of people who have died, including more than 100 girls and teachers killed at an elementary school—are surely a tragedy. The mounting economic risks—disrupted supply chains, spiking energy prices, shaken stock markets—are ominous. The danger that this war of choice launched by two nuclear-armed states will escalate further, drawing in powers across the region and beyond, is alarming. And threaded through each of these concerns is the fact that modern warfare is inextricably linked with climate change.

The linkages flow in both directions. Wars unleash gargantuan amounts of planet-warming emissions: Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example, has generated emissions equal to the annual emissions of France. Those extra emissions drive deadlier heat, drought, storms, and other impacts that wreck livelihoods, destabilize economies, and spur migration, making armed conflict more likely. The British intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6 warned in January that climate disruption and biodiversity loss, if left unchecked, will cause “crop failures, intensified natural disasters, and infectious........

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