Welcome to The Environmentalist, your column for understanding the natural world. Usually, rain is supposed to clear the air. In Tehran, it became part of the danger of war.
After strikes on oil facilities around Tehran on Mar. 7, massive plumes of black smoke rose over the city. Residents were advised by the Red Crescent to stay indoors as reports described dark residue and so-called “black rain” falling from the sky. According to Reuters, the strikes hit oil depots and refineries, igniting fires that released a toxic mix of pollutants into the air. The World Health Organization (WHO) later warned that these emissions posed serious risks to human health and the environment.
This is one of the clearest reminders that war does not only destroy through explosions, but it also lingers in the atmosphere, seeps into soil, and settles into water. When oil infrastructure burns, it can release hydrocarbons, sulfur oxides, nitrogen compounds, soot, and other hazardous particles into the air. In Tehran, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides mixed with moisture in the air, creating a dangerous acidic rainfall that can cause chemical burns on skin and severe lung damage. What fell was not just water — it was pollution returned to earth that directly harms the human population.
The adverse health effects are immediate. Officials spoke of respiratory problems, skin and eye irritation, and headaches, especially for children, elders, and people with existing illnesses. But the environmental effects are broader, and easier to overlook. Toxic rain can contaminate urban surfaces, wash pollutants into drainage systems, and carry residues into surrounding soils and waterways. Experts say there’s soil and water contamination as well as long-term ecosystem damage from soot, heavy compounds, and oil residues, adding to the human and environmental cost of this war.
That is the thing about environmental destruction in war: it rarely stays contained to a single target. A bomb may strike a refinery, but the damage spreads outward through air currents, rainfall, runoff, and food systems. Smoke does not stop at military boundaries. Polluted water does not ask who supported the conflict, who was against it and who stayed neutral. The atmosphere carries violence far beyond the site of impact.
We often talk about war in terms of territory, strategy, and casualties. We should also talk about it as an environmental event. Forests burn. Water systems are contaminated. Agricultural land is exposed to toxins. Wildlife habitat is disrupted. In cities, civilians are left breathing the aftermath. Tehran’s blackened rainfall shows that environmental harm is not a secondary side effect of war — it is one of the main outcomes.
When oil facilities explode, the battlefield does not remain on the ground. It rises into the air, mixes with the clouds, and comes back down on the people and ecosystems below. In Tehran, even the rain became part of the war. As the Lorax once said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.” So, let’s care.
