Apparently, yes.

I hadn't thought about that aspect of it. It might be a useful wrinkle.

Note that rapid formation of clathrate requires medium to high pressures and a bit of time, so it might be difficult to design a large process plant to do this.

You can also use other gasses to make clathrates. Methane is the commonest, so you can use natural gas, pressure, and refridgeration to desalinate.

(You could equally use refridgeration alone to desalinate seawater, so I don't think it's a major breakthrough)

If you combioned processes you might get to win out overall, like if you were desalinating strong brines for land reclamation or industrial salt production, or importing natural gas as clathrate in bulk tankers, you would get a potentially potable water by-product.