Below is an excerpt of our Iran Unfiltered special report on damage to civilian infrastructure in Iran amid the ongoing war, which you can read in full on the NIAC website.
The 2026 Iran War — February 28, 2026 to the Present
A cross-verified analytical report | Primary sources:
International Energy Agency (IEA) · Bloomberg · CNBC · Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) · Associated Press (AP) · Reuters · Al Jazeera · BBC Persian · UN News · Center for American Progress · The Globe and Mail · WarCosts.org · Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS) · Iran News Update · Rystad Energy · Goldman Sachs · International Monetary Fund (IMF) · Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) · Donya-e Eqtesad · Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) · The New Humanitarian · UNHCR
Introduction: The Legal Standard and What This Report Documents
Civilian infrastructure is protected under international law. Articles 52 through 56 of Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibit attacks on civilian objects - including economic infrastructure - unless those objects make an effective contribution to military action and their destruction offers a definite military advantage. The proportionality principle further requires that anticipated harm to civilians not be excessive relative to the expected military gain. A state cannot lawfully destroy the infrastructure on which a civilian population depends for survival and livelihood - its water systems, hospitals, food supply chains, power networks, and the industrial base that provides employment - simply because that infrastructure also generates revenue for the government it opposes.
The United Nations has applied this standard directly to the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. Responding to strikes on Iranian bridges and transport hubs, a spokesperson for Secretary-General António Guterres stated that the Secretary-General was deeply concerned about attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran and across the region, and that “Such attacks are unacceptable.” In a subsequent statement, the UN reiterated that “vital infrastructure on which civilians rely for survival” - including hospitals and water supplies - “must be spared.” The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Médecins Sans Frontières, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights likewise condemned strikes on water facilities, hospitals, and university campuses, even where attacking parties characterized those facilities as “dual-use.” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk went further, stating that attacks targeting civilian objects or infrastructure indispensable to civilian populations “constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law and amount to war crimes.” 1
That standard applies to all parties. Iranian retaliatory strikes damaged civilian infrastructure across the region - a power and water desalination plant in Kuwait was hit repeatedly, and civilian sites were struck in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Jordan - and killed civilians, among them a child in Kuwait. The Secretary-General’s statement addressed attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran and across the region, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights applied the identical formulation to Iranian strikes on Gulf states and Jordan: attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure must end, and “if they are deliberate, such attacks may constitute war crimes.” The Security Council condemned Iran’s attacks on its neighbours in Resolution 2817 of June 3, 2026. This report documents damage inside Iran because that is its subject; the legal standard it applies is not one that distinguishes between belligerents, and some of the regional consequences of Iranian strikes are set out in Section XIV. 2
This report is the second volume in a series on the impact of the war. Its companion, Civilian Casualties and Housing Damage in Iran (NIAC Iran Unfiltered Special Edition, July 16, 2026), documents the war’s direct human cost in the first 39 days: as many as 2,362 civilians killed, including 254 to 376 children, more than 26,500 injured, and over 125,000 residential units damaged or destroyed. The present volume documents the destruction of the infrastructure Iranian civilians depended on and traces its economic and social consequences. 3
Since February 28, 2026, United States and Israeli forces have conducted sustained air operations against Iran, concentrated in separate waves: an initial 39-day campaign (February 28 – April 8, 2026) and a renewed campaign in July 2026 that included 13 consecutive nights of US strikes across southern Iran. A third campaign of U.S. strikes began on August 30, 2026. Hostilities did not cease between these waves of strikes: the April 8 agreement was a two-week pause announced by Pakistan and later extended. The United States imposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports on April 13, and on May 7 US forces struck Bandar Abbas and Qeshm Island. The blockade was lifted under the Islamabad Memorandum of June 14 and reimposed on July 14. This report treats the period from February 28, 2026 onward as a single continuous conflict of varying intensity, not as separate wars.
Before the renewal of active hostilities in late August, the war had: taken roughly 70 percent of Iran’s refining throughput offline at its peak, by one open-source estimate; and — by Israel’s own claim — destroyed 70 percent of Iran’s steel production capacity; struck more than 80 energy facilities region-wide; damaged 27 of the country’s airports, one of them — Bushehr International — destroyed outright; damaged 12 bridges and two tunnels; struck more than 210 health centers and knocked six hospitals out of service - including a children’s cancer hospital in Ahvaz rendered inoperable; damaged or destroyed at least 1,288 schools, of which 16 required fundamental reconstruction after direct hits, along with 32 universities; deepened an internet blackout the Iranian government had already imposed during the January 2026 protest crackdown, driving access down to 12 percent of pre-war levels; eliminated more than one million jobs; and pushed food inflation above 100 percent in a country where 40 percent of the population was already below the absolute poverty line. Iran’s government has estimated total damage at approximately $270 billion. The chapters that follow document each of these findings in turn, identify who conducted each strike and what each facility is, and - wherever sources permit - present the human beings behind the numbers.
Evidence, Methodology, and Scope
This report applies a two-tier evidentiary standard. Tier 1 figures are verified by at least two independent sources using distinct methodologies. Tier 2 figures derive from official Iranian government statements or single sources not yet independently audited, and are cited with explicit attribution. All figures should be read as minimum thresholds: the Iranian government’s internet blackouts, its restrictions on media access, and its suppression of independent reporting - in place before the war and intensified during it - have constrained documentation throughout. That constraint was described by residents themselves: a Bandar Abbas resident told IranWire that no independent photographer was permitted near the bombed sites, leaving residents to infer what had been hit from the direction of fire and smoke. 4
Scope: one conflict, separate phases of major operations. Phase I: the initial US-Israeli air campaign of February 28 to April 8, 2026 (the ‘39-day war’). The ceasefire that followed was partial and repeatedly breached; hostilities continued at lower intensity through the spring, including U.S. strikes on Bandar Abbas and Qeshm Island on May 7. Phase II: intensified warfare in mid-2026, centered on the Strait of Hormuz crisis, including a U.S. campaign of strikes over 13 consecutive nights against targets across southern Iran in July. An additional third phase of the war appears to be underway at the time of publication.
The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, mediated by Pakistan and signed on June 14, 2026, declared an immediate end to the war, opened a 60-day window for a final agreement, lifted the U.S. naval blockade, authorized the resumption of Iranian oil exports, and committed the United States and regional partners to a reconstruction plan for Iran worth at least $300 billion. Its economic provisions were not delivered: Iran exported $6 billion in oil but did not receive the $12 billion in frozen assets it expected, or any subsequent investments for reconstruction. U.S. strikes resumed on July 8, and on July 18 Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister announced the suspension of Iran’s commitments under the memorandum, citing US breaches. No successor agreement had been concluded at the time of publication. Except where noted, damage figures reflect the cumulative effect of the conflict from February 28, 2026, to the time of publication. 5
Section I: Energy Infrastructure
1.1 Oil, Gas, and Refining
Iran’s oil and gas sector - the country’s primary source of hard currency - was a principal target of both US and Israeli air campaigns.
Abadan refinery, Khuzestan (early and mid-March 2026): Iran’s largest and oldest refinery, with crude processing capacity of 430,000–500,000 barrels per day, supplying approximately one quarter of national fuel demand. Witnesses in Iraq’s Basra governorate reported a heavy strike shortly after 1 a.m. local time, with fires visible across the Shatt al-Arab; it was the first reported attack on Iranian petroleum infrastructure of the war. Subsequent reporting cited additional strikes on or near the Abadan refinery in March, although the extent of damage to the facility was not independently established. WarCosts.org, an open-source damage tracker, attributed the taking of 70 percent of national refining capacity offline to a March 19 strike - the single source of the 70 percent figure used throughout this report, which has not been independently corroborated. By September, the Abadan refinery was demonstrably producing and offering petroleum products, although public reporting reviewed for this report does not establish its current crude throughput or whether it has returned to its pre-war processing capacity. More broadly, Iran’s oil minister said in early September that a large portion of reconstruction work at oil and gas refining facilities damaged during the war had been completed. He said debris removal had begun within two to three days of the attacks, although he did not provide facility-by-facility capacity figures that would allow independent assessment of how much refining capacity had actually returned to service.6
What the 70 percent figure represents. The 70 percent figure should be understood as WarCosts’ estimate of refining capacity taken offline at that point in the war, rather than an estimate that 70 percent of Iran’s refining infrastructure had been physically destroyed. Iran had ten operating refineries with a combined capacity of roughly 2.6 million barrels per day. Several factors could help explain the scale of the reported disruption: units damaged at Abadan, which accounts for roughly 17 to 19 percent of national refining capacity; strikes on the Lavan Island refinery and fuel-storage facilities associated with the Tehran refinery; the Persian Gulf Star refinery in Bandar Abbas — Iran’s largest gasoline producer at 360,000 barrels per day, supplying roughly 35 percent of national gasoline output — starved of the South Pars condensate it receives by pipeline once Asaluyeh was struck, though the refinery itself was never hit; and missile strikes on fuel storage depots in Tehran and Alborz provinces on March 7. The National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC) stated that fuel supply and distribution remained stable and uninterrupted nationwide, and that stocks had been deliberately drawn down in advance to minimize losses - a Tier 2 official claim recorded here for completeness.7
Asaluyeh complex (March 18, 2026 - Israeli drone strike): Israeli forces struck gas processing facilities at Asaluyeh, a city on Iran’s Persian Gulf coast that serves as the operational center of the South Pars gas field — the world’s largest non-associated natural gas reserve, shared between Iran and Qatar. Four gas processing units went offline. Asaluyeh, together with the Bandar Imam Khomeini port complex, accounts for more than 70 percent of Iran’s petrochemical production capacity — a separate measure from the refining figure above.
Reconstruction update (September 2026): The scale and duration of the disruption have become clearer as reconstruction has progressed. Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said war damage had reduced Iran’s natural-gas production by approximately 95 million cubic meters per day, concentrated largely at gas-processing facilities in Asaluyeh. Some of the loss was offset by redirecting processing to other refineries. By September, Paknejad said reconstruction was continuing simultaneously at four damaged gas refineries and at liquid-fuel storage and loading facilities in Tehran. Paknejad said part of the remaining lost capacity was expected to return by March 2027, with the rest during the following six months. 8
Mahshahr–Bandar Imam petrochemical zone (April 4–7, 2026 - US-Israeli strikes): Mahshahr, in Khuzestan Province on the Persian Gulf, hosts Iran’s largest concentration of petrochemical plants - dozens of interconnected production complexes built around the Bandar Imam Khomeini port. In the main wave of US-Israeli strikes on this zone, the following plants were hit: Fajr 1 and Fajr 2 (utility plants supplying power and steam to the entire zone), Bandar Imam Khomeini Petrochemical, Razi (fertilizers), Karoon, Tondgouyan (polyethylene terephthalate), BouAli Sina, Ghadir, Maroon, and Persian Gulf Energy. Six workers were killed - three at Fajr 1 and three at Fajr 2 - and 19 others were wounded across the zone.
Shiraz, Marvdasht, and South Pars (April 6–7, 2026): Strikes also targeted petrochemical facilities elsewhere in Iran. The Shiraz petrochemical complex was hit by multiple projectiles and rockets, knocking several units out of production, per the company’s public relations office. The Marvdasht petrochemical plant sustained a strike whose resulting fire was contained within minutes, with damage described by the local governorate as minor and no casualties. A unit of Amirkabir Petrochemical in the Special Economic Zone was struck on the night of April 7 with no reported casualties or chemical leaks. Two petrochemical plants in the South Pars zone were also targeted by aerial attack, per the Bushehr deputy governor.
Cumulative damage: The International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that more than 80 energy facilities across the region had been struck since the war began, with more than one-third sustaining severe damage. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol described the crisis as “the greatest global energy security threat in history.” Rystad Energy estimated repair costs for damaged energy infrastructure at $34–58 billion, and the IEA projected that restoring output to pre-war levels could take up to two years. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights addressed these strikes specifically. “Attacks on energy infrastructure - including South Pars in Iran and Ras Laffan in Qatar - will only compound hardship,” Volker Türk said in March 2026. “Disastrous humanitarian, economic and environmental consequences will be triggered if such attacks continue, resulting in deep harm to civilians - potentially for years to come.” 9