The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, said on 19 July it is "looking into reports of an overnight attack on the construction site of a planned nuclear power plant in Darkhovin, Iran"1. The strike hit at about 03:39 local time. Darkhovin sits in Khuzestan, the south-western Iranian province that CENTCOM (US Central Command) has been bombing for a week, and the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) called the strike a violation of international law.
The agency added two things beyond the confirmation it withheld. The site is in very early construction and held no nuclear material when inspectors last visited, so the attack is "not believed to pose any radiological risk". Rafael Grossi, the agency's director general, repeated his call for military restraint near all nuclear-related sites.
Yesterday the AEOI's account stood on its own, uncorroborated. The IAEA took a single day to speak on Darkhovin. It has said nothing about Bushehr since 9 July. When Iran said a US projectile hit the Bushehr perimeter on 9 July, Grossi declined in Kaliningrad to confirm anything, and the agency has not returned to it even after Sentinel-2 satellite imagery showed strike scars inside the complex. A projectile had already landed inside that same perimeter once before, in March. Darkhovin got a statement within a day.
The absence of nuclear material cuts both ways. It removes the radiological danger, and it also removes the argument that the site was struck by accident or for what it currently holds. The Pentagon framed the weekend's strikes on Khuzestan, Hormozgan and Qeshm Island as intended to punish the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and degrade Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping2, a rationale that fits the Khuzestan water station hit on 19 July more readily than a reactor foundation with nothing in it.
