At Ras Laffan, electricity and drinking water come from the same industrial complex. The war on Iran has made that proximity harder for Doha to ignore.
The CradIe
A year later, Iranian Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi said the studies were in their final stages and that the project was entering early implementation. Qatar has yet to publicly set out what it would buy or sell through the link, how construction would be financed, or who would control the flow of electricity.
Aliabadi’s remarks came three months after missile strikes on Ras Laffan damaged Qatar’s gas infrastructure during the US–Israeli war on Iran. The industrial city also houses Qatar Power Company’s power and desalination plant, which uses heat from its gas turbines to turn seawater into drinking water.
If a future strike were to interrupt power to desalination plants or pumping stations, the disruption could reach households long before repairs were complete.
Doha and Tehran were discussing the link well before the war. In June 2022, Iran’s energy ministry put the grid connection on the agenda after Ali Akbar Mehrabian, Iran’s former energy minister, met his Qatari counterpart, Saad al-Kaabi, in Doha.
The ministry also raised a separate question about technical cooperation on the gas field the two countries share, known as South Pars in Iran and the North Field in Qatar. Each country develops its own side of the field. A power line would bring a different kind of relationship, with utilities on both shores having to coordinate transfers as demand and supply change.
Qatar has already invested in strategic water reservoirs connected to desalination plants in the north and south. Those reserves give operators room to respond if production stops.
The question for Doha is whether another source of electricity could help keep water moving while domestic facilities are brought back online.
If water production stops, Kahramaa can draw down reserves and move water through its network. Imported electricity could help keep pumps running where the grid and substations remain intact. Bringing a damaged plant back into service is a separate job.
The value of an external supply depends on where the outage occurs and which equipment is still working.
Doha already has a power lifeline
The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states already share a power network, with Oman connected through the UAE. Qatar’s electricity and water utility, Kahramaa, says it has used the GCC connection for emergency support during outages and for occasional bilateral trade.
The GCC Secretariat put the network’s financial savings at more than $952 million in 2025.
That experience sets a practical test for a link with Iran. Qatar would have to determine when a second backup source would be available and what it could provide beyond the existing GCC connection. An outage confined to Qatar and a wider crisis that strains several grids at once call for different answers.
Another question is how a bilateral line would fit alongside the GCC network. Doha could arrange an exchange for its own use, but any plan to send power onward through the GCC system would raise separate questions about transmission capacity and terms of access.
The GCC’s power market already distinguishes scheduled trades from reserve sharing and unscheduled transfers.
Iran has negotiated the rules for cross-border power exchanges before. In January 2024, its grid operator and Turkiye’s transmission company signed an operating agreement for the 400-kilovolt Van–Khoy link.
Pakistan says the Polan–Gabd line, inaugurated in 2023, was built to bring an additional 100 megawatts of Iranian power to its border region. Those arrangements give Tehran experience with the operating and commercial questions it would face across the Gulf.
Who has power to spare?
A cable’s capacity tells Doha little about how much electricity Iran could deliver on the hottest day of the year. Cooling drives up demand across the Gulf, and Iran has faced summer shortages of its own.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, Iran’s peak summer demand exceeded available supply by 12 gigawatts in 2023. For Qatar, the hours when backup would be most valuable could also be the hours when Iran has the least to spare.
Regular sales would require agreements on volumes, schedules, and prices. Emergency support would require operators to agree in advance who can request a transfer and how quickly the other side must respond. Any commercial deal would also have to account for how US sanctions on Iran could affect payments, insurance, and equipment procurement.
Either utility might need to cut exports during a domestic shortage. An agreement that allows either utility to do so at short notice may suit occasional trading.
For emergency planning, Kahramaa would need to know how much power it can rely on and for how long. The two utilities would also have to agree on how to isolate a fault, what operating information they can share, and who can authorize a restart.
The financing question would continue after the line entered service. Operators would need a way to pay for inspections, replacement equipment, and repairs. If a fault required a specialist contractor to work on the cable, the arrangement would have to specify who hires the contractor and how that work can be paid for under the sanctions in force at the time.
Those terms belong in the feasibility assessment because they determine how long the link could be out of service when it is needed.
The political risk is harder to price. In March, as Washington threatened Iran’s power plants, an Iranian military spokesman warned that desalination facilities could be among the targets of retaliation. Doha would have to judge what assurances it could rely on in another war and which facilities would still need backup within Qatar.
Before a cable is laid
In October, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi made the case for a Gulf security framework that includes Iran and Iraq alongside all six GCC states.
Tehran has likewise called for a regional security arrangement and singled out Qatar and Oman for their diplomatic role. The GCC’s own water agenda is more limited. Its leaders have called for feasibility studies on water connections among member states.
Doha and Tehran could start by having their grid operators review the feasibility study’s assumptions, compare summer spare capacity, and agree whom to call in an emergency. Qatar’s water operators could then join a joint outage exercise.
A grid dispatcher can identify which substation can take an emergency transfer, while a water operator can say which pumping station needs power first and how long the reservoirs can cover a shortfall.
The test for Doha is whether its existing GCC connection and water reserves can cover the disruption. If they fall short, Qatar can judge whether the proposed line would supply power where it is needed and what commitments it would require from Iran.
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