During times of conflict, policymakers and academics tend to marginalize environmental degradation in favor of more “immediate concerns” such as loss of human life and health risks. However, this perspective needs to be changed, and environmental degradation should be considered an immediate concern. I argue that in times of war, the environment has been used as a powerful weapon by competing actors to weaken their opponents and make locations unlivable for long periods of time. The environment is not just a casualty of war but one of its most deadly weapons. This paper aims to analyze the weaponization of the environment in Iraq during two different time periods. The first period looks at the early 1990s, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and the subsequent Kurdish and Shia uprisings. The second period examines the defeat of ISIS and their use of the environment as a source of punishment during retreating. In both cases, the defeated powers - Saddam's failed invasion of Kuwait and ISIS's failed capture of Iraq - adopted a scorched-earth approach to maximize damage and minimize livability. In the second location of this study, we will explore the weaponization of the environment and resources by the state of Israel in a much more surgical and strategic way as a form of continuous warfare against the people of Gaza before and during the events of October 7th. In both cases, the damage to the people and the environment is significant, and understanding the nuance of the weaponization of the environment is key to understanding warfare and its outcome.