A projectile struck the premises of Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant on Tuesday evening, the second time in eight days that munitions have landed at the site of the country's only operational nuclear reactor. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed the impact. Russia's state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, called it a "worst-case scenario" and began evacuating additional personnel.

The strike hit at approximately 9:08 p.m. local time on March 24, landing within the plant's perimeter. The first strike, on March 18, impacted roughly 350 meters from the reactor building itself. [1] Iran's Atomic Energy Agency reported no structural damage to the reactor core and no radiation release in either incident. But the trajectory is unmistakable: someone is hitting closer.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, who has spent three years warning about nuclear facilities in conflict zones, reiterated his call for "maximum restraint to avoid nuclear safety risks during conflict." [2] The language was nearly identical to what he said after the first strike. The difference is that this time, Rosatom's response was not measured — it was panicked.

Aleksei Likhachev, head of Rosatom, told Russian media on March 25 that the situation at Bushehr was "developing along a worst-case scenario." [3] He announced a third wave of personnel evacuation, pulling an additional 163 Russian specialists from the site. The plan, he said, was to reduce the Russian presence to a skeleton crew sufficient only to maintain the reactor in a safe shutdown state. Approximately 480 Russian technicians had been stationed at Bushehr before the war began. How many remain after this latest evacuation is unclear.

Russia's fury was conspicuous. The foreign ministry issued a statement calling the strikes "unacceptable" and demanding that all parties respect the integrity of civilian nuclear infrastructure. The irony requires no commentary: for two years, Russia fought to prevent international condemnation of military operations near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, arguing that proximity to a reactor did not constitute a violation of international law. Now it is on the receiving end of the same logic, applied to a plant built with Russian technology, staffed by Russian engineers, and operated under Russian supervision.

Bushehr is not Zaporizhzhia. The Iranian plant is a single pressurized water reactor producing roughly 1,000 megawatts. It sits on the Persian Gulf coast, downwind from population centers in Bushehr province. A catastrophic breach — the scenario Likhachev invoked without quite naming — would contaminate not just Iranian territory but potentially Gulf waters supplying desalination plants across the region. [4]

No party has claimed responsibility for either strike. The United States, which has conducted the overwhelming majority of strikes on Iranian territory since early March, has not commented on the Bushehr incidents. Israel has said nothing. Iran has attributed the strikes to "the enemy" without specifying which one — a deliberate ambiguity that serves Tehran's narrative of collective Western aggression. The IAEA's Grossi has called for a "nuclear safety zone" around the facility. No government currently dropping ordnance on Iran has responded. [5]

What makes Bushehr different from every other target in this war is the permanence of its danger. A missile depot, once struck, is destroyed. A refinery burns and is rebuilt. A nuclear plant, if breached, poisons the ground and water for generations. The 350-meter miss on March 18 and the perimeter hit on March 24 are not near-misses in the conventional military sense. They are warnings from physics: the margin for error at a nuclear facility is not measured in meters. It is measured in whether the containment holds or it does not.

Rosatom's evacuation is the clearest signal yet that Russia — which built Bushehr, fueled it, and trained its operators — has concluded that the plant may be struck directly. The "worst-case scenario" Likhachev described is not a diplomatic phrase. It is an engineering assessment from the people who know the reactor's tolerances better than anyone.

The war in Iran has destroyed air bases, oil infrastructure, and military installations. It has killed hundreds. But the nuclear safety dimension — the one that turns a regional conflict into an environmental catastrophe — remains the story that nobody in a position to stop it is willing to discuss.

-- KATYA VOLKOV, Moscow