Qatar’s PM says attack on Iran’s nuclear sites would contaminate region’s water

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani warns that an attack on Iran’s Gulf coast nuclear facilities would leave countries across the region without water.

In an interview with right-wing United States media personality Tucker Carlson, who is close to US President Donald Trump, the premier says Doha had simulated the effects of an attack,

The sea would be “entirely contaminated,” and Qatar would “run out of water in three days,” he said.

The construction of reservoirs since then had increased water capacity, he added, but the risk remained for “all of us” in the region.

“No water, no fish, nothing… no life,” Sheikh Mohammed adds in the interview published on Friday, the same day that Trump said he had invited Iran to nuclear talks.

Alluding to military action, Trump says he would “rather see a peace deal” but that “the other will solve the problem.”

Qatar, which sits 190 kilometers (120 miles) south of Iran, relies heavily on desalination for its water supply, as do other Gulf Arab countries in the arid desert region.

Iran has a nuclear power plant at Bushehr on the Gulf coast, though its uranium enrichment facilities, key to building atomic weapons, are located hundreds of kilometers (miles) inland.