Israel attacked Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, Iranian state television said Thursday. The report said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” and that the facility had already been evacuated before the attack.
Israel warned earlier Thursday morning it would attack the facility and urged the public to flee the area, reports AP.
The seventh day of conflict came a day after Iran’s supreme leader rejected US calls for surrender and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.” Israel’s campaign has targeted Iran’s enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran and a nuclear site in Isfahan. Its strikes have also killed top generals and nuclear scientists.
The Arak heavy water reactor is 250 kilometres southwest of Tehran. Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon. Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to relieve proliferation concerns.
In 2019, Iran started up the heavy water reactor’s secondary circuit, which at the time did not violate Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. UK at the time was helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, stepping in for the US, which had withdrawn from the project after President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from the nuclear deal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14. Due to restrictions Iran imposed on inspectors, the IAEA has said it lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production – meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.
As part of negotiations around the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to sell off its heavy water to the West to remain in compliance with the accord’s terms. Even the US purchased some 32 tons of heavy water for over $8 million in one deal. That was one issue that drew criticism from opponents to the deal. Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 639 people and wounded 1,329 others, a human rights group said Thursday.
The Washington-based group Human Rights Activists offered the figures, which covers the entirety of Iran. It said of those dead, it identified 263 civilians and 154 security force personnel being killed. Human Rights Activists crosschecks local reports in the Islamic Republic against a network of sources it has developed in the country.
Iran has not been offering regular death tolls during the conflict and has minimized casualties in the past. Its last update, issued Monday, put the death toll at 224 people being killed and 1,277 others being wounded.