The recent end of a prolonged drought in Iran is triggering controversy across West Asia: Iranian and Iraqi authorities claim that the unusually heavy rainfall following Iranian strikes against certain American facilities in the Gulf indicate that Tehran in fact disrupted a covert weather-modification program – allegedly operated by the US and Israel.
Iraqi MP Al-Kaikhani in turn has claimed that Washington and Tel Aviv had been “stealing clouds”, causing droughts regionally.
Some analysts have dismissed the claims as “conspiracy”. The broader issue however deserves serious consideration: the question is not whether Iran has proven the existence of a US-Israeli weather weapon (so far it has not). It is whether such weather modification can be weaponized, whether great and regional powers have explored these possibilities in the past, and whether modern geoengineering technologies could eventually become instruments of geopolitical competition.
Military weather modification is no science fiction: the clearest documented case remains Operation Popeye during the Vietnam War (1967-1972) involving “cloud-seeding” missions to trigger landslides and disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines.
It remained highly classified until exposed in the early 1970s. Operation Popeye then directly inspired the 1977 Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD), which prohibits the hostile military use of environmental modification techniques with widespread effects. It would make little sense to negotiate and ratify an international treaty banning a capability that policymakers regarded as impossible back in the seventies.
Almost 50 years later, weather modification initiatives continue to exist in various forms. China operates one of the world’s largest cloud-seeding programs, employing aircraft, and drones to influence precipitation for agricultural and drought-relief purposes. Iran itself has experimented with cloud-seeding operations in recent years and reportedly expanded these efforts in late 2025.
More ambitious geoengineering concepts, including solar radiation management and marine cloud brightening, remain largely experimental – allegedly. Yet they are openly discussed by governments, think tanks, and scientific institutions. No wonder concerns about their potential military applications are growing.
An important warning comes from Professor Nayef Al-Rodhan, head of the Outer Space Security Cluster at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. In a recent piece, Al-Rodhan argues that geoengineering technologies possess an undeniable dual-use character: systems intended to mitigate climate change could also become instruments of coercion, strategic leverage, or geopolitical rivalry.
The point is that whether or not large-scale weather warfare is currently feasible (and to what extent), the perception that states possess such capabilities can itself destabilize international relations. For one thing, efforts to alter rainfall patterns in one region could be interpreted as hostile actions elsewhere. Climate intervention may very well become another arena of great-power competition alongside cyberspace, outer space, and artificial intelligence.
Back to Iranian and Iraqi allegations, one of the counterpoints made is that such has been banned under international law, as mentioned. Alas, the claim that weather warfare is illegal does not prove it is not happening. History, by the way, offers numerous examples of governments engaging in activities that violated international norms, treaties, or human rights standards.
The US experience alone provides several examples: targeted killings through drone strikes in a number of countries have generated longstanding legal controversies in recent years. More famously, the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War caused devastating consequences.
PERCEPTION RESET 