Under Chemical Conditions: The Lasting Consequences of Chemical Warfare in the Arab World (Part 3)

posted on: May 27, 2026

By Mitzi Tapang / Arab America Contributing Writer

The state security principle that governed Arab politics in the late 1940s through 1960s, when chemical weapons were introduced in the region, has seemingly entered a territory outside its familiar bilateral scope.

Previously known paradigms of the Arab cold war, as primarily constituting the ingredient of personal grudges, now exceeds the structure of inter-region tensions, with a burgeoning swing of foreign blocs and alliances. 

Egypt’s entry into the Soviet fold at the height of the East-West cold war is believed to have been the gateway to ideological shifts beyond orientalist and fundamentalist politics, and deep within the global web of conflict. As such, the Gulf War Syndrome’s deposition events in volatile environments and biological severities cannot simply be divorced from the war-torn concentration of modern-day chemical campaign.

*This is the last installation of a three-part series that looks into the long-standing effects and consequences of chemical weapons usage within and against the Arab World. See this article for part 2.

Kuwait after the Gulf War

In Kuwait after the Gulf War, the destruction caused by Iraqi forces during retreat in 1991 exacerbated one of the most toxic environmental harms caused by war on a massive scale. During the first phase of Operation Desert Storm, Iraqi troops set fire to more than 500 oil wells, leading to the burning of 3.29 x 10^6 barrels per day of crude oil and the release of smoke laden with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which are combustion-related pollutants generated through either through natural events or human activity. 

During and after the war, Riyadh, too, became biologically more dangerous. The increase in mutagenicity meant that the fine particles suspended in the atmosphere were more capable of causing permanent genetic damage. The change was attributed to the smoke from Kuwaiti oil-well fires, releasing huge quantities of soot and combustion products. Carried by wind and regional weather patterns, they spread across the Gulf and degraded air quality in neighboring states. 

The harm also spread into the sea and coastal ecosystems, as oils released from damaged tankers and pipelines, along with discharge from burning wells and war-damaged industrial sites, carries two kinds of PAHs into marine waters—petrogenic PAHs from crude oil and pyrolytic PAHs from combustion. These pollutants accumulated in places such as Manifa Bay in Saudi Arabia, where contamination reached substantial levels, with PAH concentrations ranging from under 30 to 2600 micrograms per kilogram. A year after, sediment samples from Saudi Arabia’s subtidal zones still showed measurable PAH contamination between 1 and 7 micrograms per kilogram dry weight, indicating that the pollution had settled into the seabed rather than being quickly dispersed or removed. 

By 2021, more than 90% of the unprotected contaminated soil was still exposed to the environment, and access to the sites remained restricted partly because of unexploded ordnance left behind by Iraqi troops during their retreat. In some places, the contamination reached as deep as four meters in the wellheads. Even years later, substantial PAH leve;s were still found in desert reptiles and in the insects they fed on. 

Similar contamination was documented around Abu Ali Island, where asphalt mats, sediments, polychaetes, and crabs all registered high PAH levels. The microbial community in these sediments showed a dominance of PAH-degrading bacteria, the same mixture of chemicals found in Egypt’s Temsah Lake near the Suez Canal. 

After the war, coalition forces searched the forward bunkers in the Iraqi-held area south of the Euphrates and found no chemical munitions or chemical mines. It was believed that Iraq had not placed its chemical arsenal in front-line positions for immediate battlefield use when the land war began. Iraq clearly had chemical weapons capacity, but it did not appear to have organized that capacity for immediate use against advancing coalition forces. 

As can be recalled, during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the Reagan administration was aware that it was supplying Iraq with materials used in chemical weapons production and knew that Iraq was using such weapons, yet U.S. officials were more preoccupied with preventing an Iranian victory than with restraining Iraqi escalation. Iraq’s chemical warfare was also not concealed in any meaningful sense, since the Iraqi military publicly warned in February of 1984 that “for every harmful insect, there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it” and declared that Iraq possessed “this annihilation insecticide.” 

Tehran’s acid rain

On March 7, 2026, the opening phase of the US-Israel war on Iran produced a distinctly toxic form of damage when Israeli strikes hit fuel depots and oil-related facilities on Tehran’s outskirts. The blasts sent huge “fireballs” into the sky and covered the capital with “thick black smoke,” with multiple sites in the northeast, south, and west affected and the pollution visible even in Karaj, well beyond the city center. By the following morning, soot and smoke had dimmed daylight across the metropolis.

The World Health Organization (WHO) was quick to back Iran’s warning for residents to stay indoors because the air had become hazardous. WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier stated that the airstrikes had released toxic hydrocarbons, sulfur oxides, and nitrogen compounds into the atmosphere. 

Accordingly, human rights activists and physicians issued a warning detailing how exposure to the smoke and particles could cause headaches, irritation to the eyes and skin, and breathing difficulty, while longer-term contact with some of the compounds could raise cancer risks. 

Southern Lebanon’s white phosphorus 

Prior to Netanyahu’s insistence on neutralizing South Lebanon, Human Rights Watch (HRW) researchers said they had verified renewed Israeli use of white phosphorus in southern Lebanon, reviving accusations that Israel was violating the laws of war. 

As a response, the Israeli military said it was unaware of and could not confirm the use of white phosphorus shells as claimed, and stated that its policy was not to use such shells in densely populated areas except under limited circumstances. 

Although militaries commonly use it for concealment, marking, or illumination, the deployment of white phosphorus remains deeply contentious as it is a substance that ignites on contact with oxygen and burns at extremely high temperatures. 

In an interpretative documentation and mapping, architect and PhD researcher at Delft University of Technology Ahmad Beydoun tracks the use of white phosphorus as a repeated and systematic part of Israel’s assault on southern Lebanon between October 2023 and November 2024. He recorded nearly 250 uses, with about 39% occurring in residential areas, 17% in agricultural land, and 44% in forests or open terrain. 

In Beydoun’s view, the Israeli army likely used white phosphorus to burn fields and remove cover, making it harder for people or Hezbollah fighters to hide beneath trees or in dense vegetation. Therefore the weapon functioned as a form of environmental clearance as much as a tactical smoke-producing device. It can remain buried in soil and then reignite when later disturbed, including by farmers working the land. This means people returning to their homes or fields may face hidden burn risks even months later. 

Amid the acceleration of military exchanges, the present conditions that the Arab world is under emerge as a potent case for understanding the global environmental degradation that has refused to run its course since the early days of the North Yemen civil war. These conditions, too, mark the path beyond ceasefires, and wars do not simply end following peace accords and premature interventions.

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