Shuaiba power and desalination complex

Shuaiba is a co-located power generation and desalination complex in Kuwait's Al Ahmadi Governorate, one of the plants that keeps a desert state supplied with drinking water. Gulf desalination of this generation runs off the same steam turbines that produce electricity, a co-generation arrangement chosen because waste heat from power production boils the seawater, so a missile into a co-generation hall takes the grid and the water together.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps struck Shuaiba on Friday 17 July, setting several generating units alight before the Kuwait Fire Force contained the blaze. It was the second Kuwaiti desalination site hit inside two days, and it prompted Kuwait's electricity ministry to ask residents to ration water and power.

The strike sits inside a wider pattern of escalation on Gulf infrastructure. Iranian drones hit two Kuwaiti desalination plants on 4 and 5 April, and Iran struck at Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan together on 14 July. Kuwait draws roughly 90 per cent of its drinking water from desalination, so damage to a shared power-and-water site reaches taps across the country rather than staying contained to one facility.