The area around Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant — the country’s only operational nuclear power facility — has been attacked for the fourth time since the US-Israeli war with Iran began, Iranian officials confirmed Saturday.
One employee of the plant was killed in the attack, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation said, blaming the United States and Israel. Neither Washington nor Tel Aviv confirmed carrying out the strike.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, said it had been informed of the strike and expressed “deep concern,” writing on social media that nuclear power plant sites and nearby areas “must never be attacked” and calling for “maximum military restraint” to prevent a radiological catastrophe.
“No increase in radiation levels was reported,” the IAEA stated.
Russia Begins Evacuation
Moscow moved quickly following the strike. Alexei Likhachev, head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, confirmed Saturday that the evacuation of 198 Russian nationals remaining at the Bushehr plant had begun that morning.
The evacuation marks a significant escalation of international concern over the repeated targeting of the nuclear facility, which was constructed with substantial Russian technical assistance and has operated under a Russian-Iranian joint agreement since 2011.
Iran Condemns Attacks on Universities
Separately, Iranian Science Minister Hossein Simai Sarraf said that more than 30 universities across Iran had been struck since the war began on February 28.
Visiting Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University — which was attacked on Friday — Sarraf delivered a sharp condemnation of the targeting of educational institutions.
“A civilised country, a civilised government never targets institutions of knowledge, laboratories or research centres,” he said, adding that the US and Israel “belonged to the Stone Age.”
Broader Infrastructure Strikes
A local Iranian official said the Mahshahr petrochemical complex and the Bandar Imam petrochemical company in southwestern Iran had also been targeted in recent strikes. Five people were injured in those attacks.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi used the Bushehr strikes to draw a parallel with international outrage over hostilities near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.
“Remember the Western outrage about hostilities near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine?” Araghchi wrote on social media. “Israel-U.S. have bombed our Bushehr plant four times now.”
The strikes on the petrochemical complexes and nuclear facility come amid escalating US and Israeli operations targeting Iranian energy and industrial infrastructure. President Trump had announced a 10-day pause in attacks on energy plants on March 26 to allow for negotiations — a pause that expired Saturday, coinciding with the timing of the latest Bushehr attack.
Bushehr, located on Iran’s Persian Gulf coast, is the only operating nuclear power plant in Iran and represents a critical piece of the country’s civilian nuclear infrastructure, developed over decades with Russian technical assistance.