As temperatures in the village of Bemani, Iran, near the Strait of Hormuz, soared above 100°F this week, two water facilities were struck by bombs, severing the drinking water supply for approximately 20,000 people across ten villages in the region.
An analysis by The New York Times late Wednesday suggested that the attack on the drinking-water storage facilities appeared to be a precision strike by the United States, prompting questions about whether the Trump administration intentionally targeted civilian infrastructure—an act that would constitute a war crime under international law.
The provincial water authority in Hormozgan reported that two storage tanks had been destroyed in an attack early Wednesday. Meanwhile, US Central Command stated on social media that the US Air Force and Navy had used “precision munitions” to strike “Iranian air defense, ground control stations and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz.”
Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesperson for the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, posted a video showing damage to one of the facilities, whose light blue pipes were consistent with water infrastructure. “As part of its aggression against Iran, the US military has deliberately struck vital civilian water infrastructure in Sirik, Hormozgan, destroying two reservoirs with a combined capacity of 2,500 cubic meters,” Baqaei said. “These facilities supplied drinking water to more than 20,000 residents across ten villages. This is not collateral damage – it is a calculated war crime and a flagrant violation of human rights and international humanitarian law. The US must be held accountable for committing such systematic brutal attacks on civilian life-sustaining infrastructure.”
Evidence Points to Precision Strike
The analysis of the strikes came as the US waged further attacks Wednesday night and early Thursday, including on an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman and against Iranian radars and air defenses. In its analysis, the Times said commercial satellite imagery showed two water facilities in Bemani whose descriptions matched those given by Abdolhamid Hamzehpour, the chief executive of the province’s water authority, on Wednesday, when he reported the structures had been damaged by missiles.
Hamzehpour stated that the high temperatures in the area were “unbearable” for residents without drinking water, and said that mobile water tanks had been deployed to nearby villages. The roof of one facility collapsed, according to videos released by Iranian state media, while the center of the roof of the other structure appeared to have been struck by a bomb.
The Times noted that both buildings were remotely located, with no other infrastructure in the immediate vicinity, suggesting a likely precision strike. Tasnim, a semiofficial news agency in Iran, released photos of bomb fragments that it said were recovered from the site. Researchers with the Open Source Munitions Portal identified the fragments as parts of a GBU-39 bomb, which is used by the US Air Force. The precision-guided bomb was “consistent with the damage shown in the footage of the damaged building: a clean hole punched through the building’s roof and limited blast damage around it,” reported the Times.
The bombing occurred as President Donald Trump complained that Tehran was taking too long to finalize a peace deal. The US and Iran have each carried out attacks this week, raising doubts about a ceasefire deal reached in April following Trump’s threats to wipe out Iran’s civilization. The escalation also risks derailing broader regional stability, as noted in our analysis of US-Iran airstrikes.
“Trump is so angry that Iran will not give him a deal that he is telling the US military to commit war crimes,” said Phillips P. O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews. “Destroying a drinking water facility is not an attack on a target of war, but a mafia-style operation designed to harm the Iranian people.”
The incident underscores the vulnerability of civilian infrastructure in conflict zones, a concern that resonates across Asia, where water security is a growing flashpoint. For context, similar tensions over water resources have emerged in South Asia, as explored in our report on South Asia's water wars.
