DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israel’s military warned people Thursday to evacuate the area around Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor.
The warning came in a social media post on X. It included a satellite image of the plant in a red circle like other warnings that preceded strikes.
Israel’s seventh day of airstrikes on Iran came a day after Iran’s supreme leader rejected U.S. calls for surrender and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.” Israel also lifted some restrictions on daily life, suggesting the missile threat from Iran on its territory was easing.
The Israeli military said Thursday’s round of airstrikes targeted Tehran and other areas of Iran, without elaborating.
Already, Israel’s campaign has targeted Iran’s enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran and a nuclear site in Isfahan. Its strikes have also killed top generals and nuclear scientists.
A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded. In retaliation, Iran has fired some 400 missiles and hundreds of drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds. Some have hit apartment buildings in central Israel, causing heavy damage.
The Arak heavy water reactor is 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of Tehran.
Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to relieve proliferation concerns.
In 2019, Iran started up the heavy water reactor’s secondary circuit, which at the time did not violate Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Britain at the time was helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, stepping in for the U.S., which had withdrawn from the project after President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from the nuclear deal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14.
Due to restrictions Iran imposed on inspectors, the IAEA has said it lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.
As part of negotiations around the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to sell off its heavy water to the West to remain in compliance with the accord’s terms. Even the U.S. purchased some 32 tons of heavy water for over $8 million in one deal. That was one issue that drew criticism from opponents to the deal.
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