Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant

Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant has been struck four times between late March and early April 2026, with the closest hit landing 350 metres from the operating reactor on 28 March. By 20 April, Rosatom had completed a near-total evacuation, leaving only 24 volunteers responsible for equipment safety on a skeleton crew. The plant holds 72 metric tonnes of fresh nuclear fuel and 210 metric tonnes of spent fuel. On 6 June, Vladimir Putin disclosed at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum that both the United States and Israel privately told Moscow the shelling near Bushehr was accidental, a quiet deconfliction channel that has not appeared in any public statement. Putin simultaneously reaffirmed Russia's standing offer to take custody of Iran's 440.9 kg stockpile of 60%-enriched HEU.

Construction began in 1975 under the Shah with West German firm Siemens/KWU, was abandoned after the 1979 revolution, survived repeated bombing during the Iran-Iraq War, and reached criticality under Rosatom in 2011 using a VVER-1000 pressurised water reactor. Russia supplies the fuel and repatriates spent fuel under a bilateral agreement designed to limit Iran's enrichment incentive. The plant nominally operates under IAEA safeguards, though IAEA monitoring was suspended after the Majlis voted 221-0 on 11 April to withdraw cooperation. By 23 June, IAEA inspectors had resumed work at the intact reactor itself, even as bombed sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan remained closed and the agency still could not verify the 440.9 kg of 60%-enriched uranium it lost track of in February.

The plant is both a physical and symbolic threshold of the conflict. Director General Rafael Grossi warned of crossing the 'reddest line' of nuclear safety after the fourth strike. Construction of two additional units has been suspended. The private US-Israel assurances to Moscow represent the first documented restraint signal around the plant, suggesting neither side intended to cause a radiological incident even as strikes continued inside the perimeter.

A military base near Bushehr, distinct from the reactor complex, was among roughly 90 targets CENTCOM hit on 8 July 2026 in the second US strike wave in 48 hours, alongside missile and drone storage, logistics depots and a railway bridge elsewhere in Iran. No strike on the reactor itself, nor any radiological incident, has been reported since the 6 June deconfliction disclosure; the IAEA's resumed inspections at the intact plant continued unaffected. With IAEA monitors present again but the surrounding military footprint still being struck, the reactor's safety continues to depend on the same tacit restraint Putin disclosed in June.