Desalination has moved from background infrastructure to the front line of Gulf economic and security policy, and the numbers explain why. The Middle East holds more than half of global desalination capacity, its regional installed base passed 52 million m³/day in 2024, and the region is on track to contract a further ~20.9 million m³/day between 2024 and 2028 — roughly 53% of all new capacity worldwide. The build-out is skewing decisively toward reverse osmosis, increasingly