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The U.S.–Israeli war has caused massive environmental devastation, adding to the long history of American wars with toxic legacies.

“We won,” ‌President Donald Trump declared in March, less than two weeks after launching his war of choice against Iran. Claiming that nation was “very much destroyed and, even, obliterated,” Trump had already promised the conflict would bring peace to the region and, somehow, the globe. “The heavy and pinpoint bombing … will continue, uninterrupted … as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!” Trump wrote. But more than six months and two failed ceasefires later, the floundering conflict sputters along. And you may have noticed that world peace has yet to be announced.

Having again been bested in battle — the latest loss in a long-running series of meaningless victories (like over lowly Grenada), stalemates (like the forever war in Somalia), and defeats (like conflicts in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) — the U.S. military has slunk away from the fight in favor of an “economic D-Day” that so far seems to be little more than bluster.

Trump’s other stated war aims, like Iran’s unconditional surrender and seizing its oil infrastructure, have also fallen by the wayside. In the end, the major accomplishments of Trump’s war seem to be limited to death and destruction: hundreds of U.S. casualties that the Pentagon has sought to downplay and cover-up, and thousands of Iranian deaths that the Pentagon is loath to mention or investigate, including a family of eight — five of them children, one a 20-day-old infant.

But the almost 40,000 Iranians killed or wounded in the war may only scratch the surface of the true toll, as Ashley Gate writes in her latest piece for TomDispatch. The rough outlines of the ecological devastation are only just coming to light. And if history is any guide, the environmental fallout of the war may reach far into the future, affecting untold numbers of Iranians who survived the conflict and many others in generations to come.

— Nick Turse, editor of TomDispatch

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The Toxic Inheritance of America’s Wars

Esmaeil Baqaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, recently warned of the increasing environmental damage caused by the U.S. war, drawing attention to oil contamination in the Persian Gulf that has begun washing up on Iranian shores. “This incident is only one visible example of the extensive pollution — both overt and concealed — that has degraded the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman,” he wrote on X. “Who bears responsibility for compensating these damages? Is it the nations that consume the inexpensive energy exported from our region, the shipping insurers, or the aggressors and their partners who have transformed the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman into a theater for military operations and the testing of highly destructive weaponry?”

Alongside death and destruction that has killed or wounded tens of thousands of Iranians, the U.S.–Israeli war has caused massive environmental devastation. By March, attacks had already resulted in more than 300 incidents of potential environmental harm, documented across 12 countries in the region, according to a report by the Conflict and Environment Observatory. These toxic exposures threaten not only today’s war victims, but also future generations who will grapple with the knock-on effects.

The ongoing satellite blackout has hindered the work of those tracking the environmental devastation.

The ongoing satellite blackout has hindered the work of those tracking the environmental devastation.

Major commercial satellite companies have restricted or delayed the publication of their Middle East data at the behest of the U.S. government. Likely intended to obscure the true extent of damage inflicted on U.S. military facilities across the region, the ongoing satellite blackout has also hindered the work of those tracking the environmental devastation that has accompanied the conflict since it began in February. Even with the limited data, the Conflict and Environment Observatory has concluded that “[a]ll parties to the conflict” have appeared to target “environmentally risky facilities,” including oil infrastructure and water desalination plants.

According to research by the Climate and Community Institute, U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran in the first 14 days of the war emitted roughly 5 million metric cubic tons of greenhouse gases. Put another way: In two........

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