How the war in Iran could endanger one of Earth’s most unique ecosystems

May 14, 2026

4 min read

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How the war in Iran could endanger one of Earth’s most unique ecosystems

Despite decades of damage, the Persian Gulf’s ecological marvels remain—for now

By Meghan Bartels edited by Andrea Thompson

Coral seen near the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

Mahmut Serdar Alakus/Anadolu via Getty Images

The Middle East—and the Persian Gulf at its heart—have been battered by the Iran war since late February. Mines have been deployed across the Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Gulf, countless spills have leaked oil into its waters, and missiles have fallen perilously close to Iran’s sole nuclear power plant, risking radiation seepage from the coastal facility. Even before this current chaos began, the underappreciated treasure troves of the Gulf’s ecosystems were under stark pressure, scientists say. Now they worry that remarkable examples of evolution in action and potential genetic secrets to surviving climate change may be lost.

“These environments are on the edge,” says Kaveh Samimi-Namin, a marine biologist at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, who grew up in Iran. “Anything that happens that impacts the environment can really push those animals, that biodiversity, off the cliff.”

“A sea of contrasts”

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The Gulf’s ecosystems are shaped by remarkable geology and geography, says Bernhard Riegl, a marine biologist at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, who has worked in the Persian Gulf for more than 30 years.

Sandwiched between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf is geologically young; the shallowest areas have been under water for only around 6,000 years and the body of water overall is only a result of glaciers melting at the end of the last ice age. That means its marine life are all new arrivals in the grand scheme of things—in fact, the corals are so young they haven’t had time to build extensive reefs.

The Gulf is also an extreme place to live: its summers are broiling, its winters are chilly, and its waters are remarkably salty. Yet it is bursting with life. “The Gulf is often misunderstood as biologically poor due to its harsh environment,” says Mohammad Reza Shokri, a marine biologist at Shahid Beheshti University in Iran.

Take corals: “If you put the corals of the Great Barrier Reef in the Gulf now, they will be all toasted,” Samimi-Namin says. Yet in just a few thousand years the corals that call the Gulf home evolved to tolerate the hostile conditions.

With most tropical reefs expected to face conditions like the Gulf’s by 2100—and already faltering under increasingly frequent marine heat waves—that makes the Gulf’s coral a source of valuable genetic information about resilience that could have implications for the rest of the world’s reefs. “It’s like somebody built a little laboratory out there for how tropical biota should behave in really extreme climate,” Riegl says. “We’re left with the evolutionary gold.”

A Sooty Gull nesting on an island within the Persian Gulf.

Karim Sahib/AFP via Getty Images

Of course, there’s more than just corals in the Gulf’s waters. Patches of seagrass meadows and mangrove forests line the coasts, as do mudflats that serve as crucial feeding sites for migratory birds. The Gulf also boasts some of the most charismatic species on Earth: hundreds of massive whale sharks were discovered in a seasonal aggregation amid an oil field off the coast of Qatar in 2011, and surveys in 2019 and 2020 revealed the largest known herd of manateelike dugongs.

The ecology of the Strait of Hormuz, where salt water enters the Gulf, is particularly stunning, Riegl says. Its biodiversity, he says, is “just absolutely epic.” From there, water flows north and west along the steep shores of Iran, then south and east along the shallower coast of the Arabian Peninsula. That slow counterclockwise flow, combined with the way the water increases in temperature and salinity as it flows through the Gulf, means that the Iranian side hosts the milder conditions and higher biodiversity.

Although the Gulf’s species have endured incredible conditions, stress has already taken a toll. “It is a sea of contrasts,” Shokri says. “This duality—resilience alongside fragility—is what makes the Gulf both scientifically important and conservation-critical.”

Feeling the heat

The Gulf’s vulnerability has become increasingly evident over the three decades Riegl has studied it, because of th