Iran’s foreign minister has warned Gulf states that any radioactive fallout from attacks on the Bushehr nuclear plant would devastate nearby Arab capitals before reaching Tehran, sharpening fears that the widening US-Israeli campaign against Iranian strategic sites could trigger a cross-border nuclear emergency. The warning followed what Iranian and international officials described as the fourth strike affecting the Bushehr area in under three weeks. Seyed Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday that “radioactive fallout will end life in GCC capitals, not Tehran” and invoked the international uproar over fighting near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to question what Tehran sees as muted Western reaction to repeated attacks near Bushehr. His remarks were carried in a public statement on X and echoed by regional media, giving them a direct public record rather than leaving them as second-hand accounts. ][2])
The immediate trigger was a strike reported on April 4 near the Bushehr complex, Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency said it had been informed by Iran that a projectile struck close to the site, killing a member of the plant’s physical protection staff and damaging a building through shockwaves and fragments. The agency said no increase in radiation levels had been reported, a point that eased immediate fears but did not calm concern about what might follow if the reactor or spent fuel storage were hit more directly.
That incident did not come out of nowhere. Reuters reported on March 17 that a projectile hit the premises of the Bushehr plant without causing injuries or plant damage, and on March 28 Rosatom chief Alexei Likhachev said another strike in the vicinity was the third such incident in 10 days. By the time Araghchi spoke on April 4, the chronology cited by Iran — four attacks affecting the plant area — matched the pattern laid out by the IAEA notifications and Russian statements, even though the scale and exact targeting of each incident have varied.
Bushehr carries a different order of risk from enrichment sites because it is an operating civilian power reactor on the Gulf coast, built with Russian involvement and still staffed in part by Russian specialists. Likhachev said on March 19 that the plant held 72 tons of fissile material and 210 tons of spent nuclear fuel, warning that any serious incident would be regional in scale and that no party to the conflict would avoid radiation exposure if a major accident occurred there. That assessment helps explain why Gulf capitals, long uneasy about Bushehr’s proximity to their coastlines, are watching the strikes with growing alarm.
Russia’s reaction has become more urgent as the fighting has edged closer to the plant. Rosatom said on April 4 it had evacuated a further 198 staff from Bushehr, adding to withdrawals that had been under way since the war began at the end of February. Likhachev described developments around the site as unfolding in line with a worst-case scenario, and Rosatom said it had briefed President Vladimir Putin on the danger. Moscow had already called for a “safety island” around the facility and demanded firm condemnation of attacks in its vicinity.
Araghchi’s warning also carried a political message beyond nuclear safety. By comparing Bushehr with Zaporizhzhia, he sought to expose what Tehran regards as selective outrage in Western capitals: intense concern when a nuclear plant in Ukraine is endangered, but less visible fury when Iran’s only functioning reactor is repeatedly caught in the line of fire. He also linked the Bushehr strikes with attacks on petrochemical facilities, arguing that the pattern points to a broader campaign against Iran’s economic and energy infrastructure rather than narrowly defined military objectives.
For Gulf governments, the threat is both geographic and strategic. Bushehr sits on the Gulf littoral, across waters shared with Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Any serious airborne or maritime contamination event would immediately become a regional public health, environmental and shipping crisis, not simply an Iranian domestic emergency. Earlier Gulf warnings over the years about the plant’s vulnerability, once treated largely as contingency planning, now look less hypothetical as strikes edge closer to operational nuclear infrastructure.