Bunkers, and Biodiversity: The Environmental Toll of War A Case Study of the 2025 Iran-Israel-U.S. Conflict
War does more than scar the political landscape, it devastates ecosystems, poisons air and water, displaces communities, and sets back global environmental progress by decades. As the world edges dangerously close to irreversible climate tipping points, the environmental cost of armed conflict is a price humanity simply cannot afford. No War Leaves Nature Unscathed!
In June 2025, the world witnessed a troubling escalation in the long-simmering tensions between Iran and Israel, with the United States joining militarily in what became one of the most sophisticated air raids in modern history. While headlines focused on geopolitics, military strategy, and nuclear fears, the invisible casualty was the environment.
This article explores how a single war or even a few days of targeted airstrikes can leave long-lasting environmental scars. It uses the Iran-Israel-U.S. conflict as a case study to argue why the world must strive harder than ever to avoid war, not only for peace, but for planetary survival.
2. The Scenario: Technology vs. Territory
Following a tit-for-tat series of provocations in early June, including Israel’s airstrikes on Iranian missile sites and Iran’s drone barrages on Israeli cities, the United States launched a full-scale strike on three major Iranian nuclear installations: Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.
This operation involved:
• Over 125 military aircraft, including refueling tankers, surveillance planes, and fighter jets;
• Submarine-launched cruise missiles, mainly Tomahawks, targeting auxiliary infrastructure;
• 7 B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, each deploying GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators to destroy deeply buried uranium enrichment facilities.
Fordow alone lies 80 meters (260 feet) beneath a mountain, a bunker designed to survive conventional warfare. But even this fortress couldn’t withstand the power and precision of the world’s most advanced aerial weapons.
3. Environmental Consequences of the Strikes
a. Chemical, Not Just Explosive Fallout
Unlike a nuclear detonation, uranium enrichment sites don’t cause traditional radiation spikes when bombed. But they store and process uranium hexafluoride (UF₆), a highly toxic and reactive compound. When disturbed or exploded:
• UF₆ turns into uranyl fluoride and hydrofluoric acid, both corrosive and extremely hazardous to humans and the environment.
• Inhalation can lead to severe respiratory damage and long-term kidney problems.
• Released into the soil or air, it can poison aquifers, crops, and ecosystems for decades.
Even without a single nuclear warhead being hit, the U.S. Department of Energy warned that the risk of secondary contamination was high, especially at Fordow, where underground facilities had limited ventilation and damage assessments remain incomplete.
b. Dust, Debris, and Soil Contamination
Airstrikes vaporized concrete, rock, and metal, creating dust clouds laced with:
• Heavy metals,
• Hydrofluoric acid particles,
• Potential radioactive residue.
When this toxic cocktail settles:
• Soil is rendered infertile,
• Groundwater becomes unsuitable for consumption,
• Local biodiversity plants, insects, animals suffers extinction-level trauma.
These effects don’t stop at the blast zone. Strong winds can carry toxins across borders, affecting nations uninvolved in the conflict.
c. Destruction of Natural and Human Systems
The attacks also damaged:
• Waste treatment systems,
• Ventilation and filtration units in the enrichment plants,
• Nearby power grids, leading to electrical fires and fuel leaks.
Entire regions once safe for farming or habitation, may require years of environmental remediation, if not permanent evacuation. These sites, meant for science and civil energy development, now resemble tombs of toxicity.
4. What If There Had Been Nuclear Weapons?
Though no warheads were confirmed at the sites, the world narrowly avoided catastrophe.
What Could Have Happened:
• A nuclear detonation, even accidental, would have vaporized nearby towns.
• Radioactive fallout could have blanketed multiple provinces, drifting into neighboring countries.
• Groundwater and rivers would be poisoned with strontium-90, cesium-137, and other isotopes.
• A Chernobyl-like exclusion zone would emerge only worse, because it would have been intentional.
The Global Ripple Effect
A nuclear accident during a military strike could have:
• Triggered worldwide protests,
• Sent markets crashing,
• Provoked retaliatory attacks with unpredictable global consequences,
• Created refugee waves far larger than what political systems can manage,
• Left vast tracts of land uninhabitable for centuries.
5. War’s Environmental Toll Beyond Bombs
Related Posts
Even limited warfare pollutes. Consider what war machines require:
a. Fossil Fuels and Emissions
The B-2 bomber alone burns approximately 25,000 liters of fuel per mission. Multiply that by:
• 7 bombers,
• Dozens of refueling jets,
• 125 support aircraft.
The carbon emissions from just a three-day strike rival the annual emissions of small island nations, jeopardizing progress on global climate goals. War doesn’t only threaten lives it warms the planet.
b. Maritime Pollution
Submarines launching cruise missiles are powered by nuclear reactors or diesel systems. Naval operations around the Strait of Hormuz stirred concerns about:
• Oil spills from tanker reroutes,
• Sonar disruption of marine life,
• Accidental fuel discharges into the Persian Gulf, a fragile marine ecosystem already under stress.
c. Displacement and Humanitarian Fallout
War creates refugees. When civilians flee bombed-out cities:
• Makeshift camps grow in fragile ecosystems,
• Forests and wetlands are cleared for shelter,
• Water and sanitation systems are overwhelmed.
In this case, over 200 Iranians and 24 Israelis were confirmed dead, and thousands displaced. The result: environmental degradation from human desperation. The more bombs fall, the more forests vanish.
6. Lessons from Past Wars
History offers sobering reminders of war’s environmental cost:
• Vietnam: The U.S. military sprayed over 20 million gallons of Agent Orange, decimating forests and causing birth defects for generations.
• Iraq: Burning oil fields during the Gulf War turned skies black, suffocating wildlife and turning the land into a toxic wasteland.
• Ukraine: Russia’s invasion led to nuclear power plant damage, shelling near Chernobyl, and the use of banned munitions that poisoned soil and rivers.
Every modern conflict leaves a toxic legacy. The 2025 conflict fits a pattern the world can no longer afford to repeat.
7. Why This Must Be the Last War
Every war today risks becoming a climate war. The Iran-Israel-U.S. episode was not the first time a conflict threatened environmental catastrophe, but it should be the last warning.
The World Cannot Afford Another War Because:
• Climate change is already destabilizing societies from floods to wildfires to droughts.
• War accelerates carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem collapse.
• Environmental damage is irreversible on many fronts soil, water, air, species.
• Recovery takes decades, sometimes longer than peace itself lasts.
War zones become ecological sacrifice zones, where progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is wiped out in hours. Trees don’t grow back as fast as missiles fall.
8. The Path Forward: Peace as Environmental Policy
If global leaders want to protect the planet, they must treat peace like climate action.
a. Reinforce Global Agreements
• Revise the Geneva Conventions to include specific environmental protections.
• Expand international treaties to prohibit the targeting of chemical or nuclear facilities.
b. Prioritize Diplomacy Over Airstrikes
• Economic sanctions, cyber deterrence, and regional peace forums are more sustainable and less destructive.
• Fund and support the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and its rapid-response taskforces to mitigate war-related ecological damage.
c. Invest in Environmental Intelligence
• Satellites, drones, and AI can now detect illicit nuclear activity without risking soldiers or soil.
• Global enforcement should rely on data-driven verification, not explosives.
d. Promote Education and Citizen Advocacy
• Equip civilians to understand the cost of conflict not only in terms of lives, but trees, air, and soil.
• Empower youth movements to connect peacebuilding and climate justice.
In conclusion, the environmental toll of the Iran-Israel-U.S. conflict proves that even non-nuclear wars can permanently scar our world. While military analysts debate the strategic outcome, the Earth has already lost: poisoned soil, tainted air, scarred landscapes, and disrupted lives.
We live in a world interconnected by climate, trade, ecosystems, and compassion. A strike on one region is felt everywhere.
Let this be a wake-up call: war is the enemy of the environment, and peace is the most powerful form of climate action we have left.
One war is too many. Let’s not risk another.
