Iran Raises Alarm at IAEA Over US-Israeli Strikes on Nuclear Sites
When bombs fall near a nuclear reactor, the whole world should be paying attention. That was the urgent message Iran delivered at an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors on Saturday, as its delegation condemned what it called an unprecedented assault on facilities protected under international law, according to Mehr News Agency.
Iranian representatives told the gathered member states that the United States and Israel carried out 17 waves of strikes against Iranian nuclear sites during what Tehran described as the “12-Day and Ramadan wars.” The most alarming of these came within 350 meters of the Bushehr nuclear power plant close enough, Iran warned, to have triggered a radioactive disaster affecting the entire region.
The IAEA’s own Director General had previously cautioned that a direct hit on Bushehr could release dangerous radioactive material into the environment. Iran made sure the board didn’t forget that warning.
At the heart of Iran’s argument was a simple but powerful point: these were not ordinary military targets. The sites struck were operating under IAEA Safeguards, meaning they were monitored, declared, and protected under international agreements. Attacking them, Iran argued, violates the UN Charter, international law, and decades of non-proliferation efforts built painstakingly since the Cold War.
Iran called on member states to reject double standards, push back against the normalization of such strikes, and consider new international rules explicitly banning attacks on safeguarded nuclear facilities.
The stakes, Tehran reminded the room, go far beyond Iran itself. When the rules protecting peaceful nuclear sites can be ignored by powerful nations, no country’s facilities are truly safe and the entire framework holding nuclear dangers in check begins to crack.
