For a columnist or blogger who writes about politics and international affairs, Donald Trump is the gift that keeps on giving. He does/says something almost daily that irritates someone and that outrages many with its lack of wisdom, its lack of understanding or, sometimes, its lack of humanity. He makes one statement after another that is contradictory of what we know or what he has said or both. He gives few explanations that sound credible, even vaguely so. A lot of us dissent from his policies and would not mind being known publicly as dissenters–but a question is this-dissenting from what, or rather which thing? There are many possibilities.

He has gotten us deeply involved in what amounts to a shooting war in the Middle East, though not yet what I’d call a full scale one. And he was elected NOT to do this. His raid last June was supposed to have eliminated Iran as a nuclear threat. He said so, never mind the fact that many observers including this one suggested proof was in order. None was forthcoming. So now we do it over again? What about those claims we had already done it?

Now we are fighting for what objective? Well, that seems to change almost daily, but certainly one that that has remained almost steady if not believable is that they are trying to eliminate Iran’s ability to become a nuclear power and/or to change the regime to a non-nuclear pursuing one. It is not entirely clear just how they plan to do this.

As was learned last year much of Iran’s nuclear materials, tools, etc are underground and extremely hard to access for the US or anyone else trying to get to them. But Iran seemingly does have enough actual nuclear material, that it is feasible they could reach the level of being a nuclear power soon, just when I don’t know. It would not be right now, perhaps not for some time, but eventually this would come.

Any attempt to capture their nuclear materials and get them out of the country, which the Administration has suggested it might do, would be extremely difficult and would involved great danger to those assigned to do the job.. It might have great danger for others around the world, too.

We can all agree this would be a bad thing, a very bad thing indeed. This regime has been borderline for more than four decades and is now run, we think, by a 56 year old fanatic made even more so by the fact that he has personal as well as political/religious/policy reasons to hate us.

Of course, it’s not really clear to some of us who is running Iran. I have heard it suggested, in the media, that the military and political parts of the government may be run by different people with possibly somewhat different desires, though none of them view the US well. It is not clear where the new leader is or if he is well enough to actually make decisions. If he’s not then it’s not clear who is. It is clear that while Iran has been badly battered and clearly cannot hold out indefinitely, is could still make trouble and has one large weapon, maybe two. The obvious one is the Strait of Hormuz, discussed almost constantly on TV, so I won’t go into it much. They seem to have effective power there to determine whether anyone gets ships through and if so, who they are. The other is that they apparently could deprive many of their neighbors of their water supply.

This latter matter has been mentioned every now and then by the media but is rarely explained in any detail. I will not do detail here as my scientific knowledge is next to zero, but there’s what I’ve found on the internet–(ask for something like “Iran and desalination” if you wish to pursue)

Desalination has been around for about a century but was not much used until recent decades. After the oil shortages of about a half century ago, it came into its own in the 1980’s and ’90’s and is now an important part of the area’s life. Desalination facilities are an important part of the economies of these nations and would be difficult if not impossible to do without. The ones in Kuwait and the UAE(United Arab Emerates) have already taken indirect damage from missiles or drones that may have gone astray. What if attacks on them were intentional and accurate?

There is a group known as the Gulf Cooperation Council(GCC) which includes Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE.. Whatever their disagreements over some matters, they are united in trying to get as much usable water for their countries as is possible. And all of them have tried to add to their natural supplies of fresh water via desalination. These six states combined have more than 3000 of these plants

Making a direct attack on these would be a “significant escalation of hostilities” Whether they would work is a question, one to which our people would like to attach a definite answer of “no.” But there are complications, because while it would be difficult it might not be impossible.

Since these Gulf States have so many such facilities, getting all of them might require a great many missiles and drones and a lot of time. Accuracy would need to be high. So the prospects of the Iranians actually succeeding at this are not very high. BUT if it worked it could create real trouble. The article I read on this was not too clear on some parts, but it did suggest that this system is not simple. In addition to the desalination plants there are “mega complexes” which appear to be a sort of organizing system that brings all of this together, perhaps literally and figuratively, and seem to play a large role in dispensing the usable water to different areas. There are a lot fewer of these, apparently, and “attacks on these hubs could be far more disruptive.” Whether the Iranians are up to it technologically is not clear, but they do have a history of being surprisingly “up to it” in the latest technology beyond what the West expected..

It is possible, though perhaps not likely that they could be restrained by International Law, not a matter that seems to have restrained them much in the past. The Geneva Conventions regulations prohibit harming “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population,” and drinking water is specified. Such sanctions would give the Iran’s opponents a reasonable –and legitimate–cause for complaint, but whether they would prevent anything is another question

There are apparently more ways than one Iran could employ to go after these plants. They could try to bomb them, that is send missiles after them, and blow them up directly. This would, I should think, be fairly easily traceable, though maybe that’s not a big concern in Iran. Less traceable, and also perhaps more easily done, they could encourage sabotage… They could pay people to do it or encourage them to join the Iranian side in their struggle or both.

If these desalinization plants were actually seriously damaged in large number, it is hard to say exactly what would happen, but it could be dire. In some places people would shortly be without much, possibly sometimes any, drinking water, Water would have to be rationed in many places and this would lead to bad feelings and maybe civil strife. Also, since desalinized water is used in their running of their economies, these economies might grind to a halt or something near to it.

So there we have ambiguities in the Trump policy which leave us sometimes wondering which part we dissent from today. And in addition, and perhaps more seriously, we have the serious damage an already badly damaged Iran could do on its way down. It might pull any others with it,