Explained: What are the risks from Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure?

Israel’s stated goal in its fight with Iran is to dismantle its potential to build a nuclear weapon.

It isn’t clear if Israel has the military might to do it alone, with some of the key sites Iran is using to store and process nuclear material protected deep underground.

So far, Israel has conducted strikes on nuclear sites like Natanz, Khondab, Isfahan and Fordow.

Yesterday, Israel said it had struck the Bushehr site, Iran’s only active nuclear plant, before seemingly rowing back the comments.

But what are the risks from such attacks, and could they lead to a nuclear fallout of some kind in a region home to tens of millions of people?

Underground safety

Peter Bryant, a professor at the University of Liverpool who specialises in radiation protection science, said he was not too concerned about the risks so far.

While there had been strikes on the likes of Khondab, a lot of the damage reported so far is external, and such facilities are designed to contain internal issues.

“Uranium is only dangerous if it gets physically inhaled or ingested or gets into the body at low enrichments,” he said.

Nuclear material could end up buried

Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at London thinktank RUSI, said attacks on facilities at the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle – the enrichment stages where uranium is prepared for use in a reactor – pose primarily chemical, not radiological risks.

Sites like Natanz and Isfahan are enrichment sites.

Such chemicals could be dispersed, but such a risk is again lower with underground facilities.

Simon Bennett, who leads the civil safety and security unit at the University of Leicester in the UK, said Israeli strikes were likely to end up “burying nuclear material in possibly thousands of tonnes of concrete, earth and rock”.

Risk of ‘absolute catastrophe’ at power plant

The major concern would be if the Israelis attacked the Bushehr nuclear reactor.

Richard Wakeford, honorary professor of epidemiology at the University of Manchester, said that while enrichment facilities would remain a chemical issue, a reactor strike would be a “different story”.

This could lead to the release of radioactive elements either in a plume of volatile materials or into the sea, he added.

James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said an attack on Bushehr “could cause an absolute radiological catastrophe”.

Gulf State water supply could be vulnerable

For the Gulf States, any potential impact on Bushehr threatens to contaminate Gulf waters, jeopardising a critical source of desalinated potable water.

In a number of Gulf countries like the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, desalinated water accounts for a huge amount of drinking water.

Nidal Hilal, professor of engineering and director of New York University Abu Dhabi’s Water Research Centre, said: “Coastal desalination plants are especially vulnerable to regional hazards like oil spills and potential nuclear contamination.”

Israel Iran war Live Updates: Iran says 430 killed on home soil since start of conflict

By CNBCTV18.COM | Jun 21, 2025 5:56 PM IST (Updated)

Israel Iran War Updates:US President Donald Trump is contemplating if his nation should join Israel in its war against Iran in two weeks. His uncertainty to join the war has deepened, signalling he may back a ceasefire but also warned that he could order military action sooner than the two-week deadline as well.

Israel Iran War Updates: Israel and Iran continued to trade attacks on Saturday as US President Donald Trump is contemplating if his nation should join Israel in its war against Iran in two weeks. His uncertainty to join the war has deepened, signalling he may back a ceasefire but also warned that he could order military action sooner than the two-week deadline as well.

Despite hours of talks aimed at de-escalating fighting between Israel and Iran failed to produce a diplomatic breakthrough, the war entered its second week with a fresh round of strikes between the two adversaries. European ministers and Iran’s top diplomat met for four hours Friday in Geneva, as President Donald Trump continued to weigh U.S. military involvement and worries rose over potential strikes on nuclear reactors.

European officials expressed hope for future negotiations, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he was open to further dialogue while emphasizing that Tehran had no interest in negotiating with the U.S. while Israel continued attacking.

“Iran is ready to consider diplomacy if aggression ceases and the aggressor is held accountable for its committed crimes,” he told reporters. No date was set for the next round of talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military operation in Iran would continue “for as long as it takes” to eliminate what he called the existential threat of Iran’s nuclear program and arsenal of ballistic missiles. Israel’s top general echoed the warning, saying the Israeli military was ready “for a prolonged campaign.”

But Netanyahu’s goal could be out of reach without U.S. help. Iran’s underground Fordo uranium enrichment facility is considered to be out of reach to all but America’s “bunker-buster” bombs. Trump said he would put off deciding whether to join Israel’s air campaign against Iran for up to two weeks.

The war between Israel and Iran erupted June 13, with Israeli airstrikes targeting nuclear and military sites, top generals and nuclear scientists. At least 657 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 2,000 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group.

Stay tuned to catch all the LIVE Updates from the ongoing war between Israel and Iran

Israel and Iran traded strikes a week into their war on Friday (June 20, 2025) as President Donald Trump weighed U.S. military involvement and key European ministers met with Iran’s top diplomat in Geneva in a scramble to de-escalate the conflict.

But the first face-to-face meeting between Western and Iranian officials in the weeklong war concluded after four hours with no sign of an immediate breakthrough.

To give diplomacy a chance, Mr. Trump said he would put off deciding for up to two weeks whether to join Israel’s air campaign against Iran. U.S. participation would most likely involve strikes against Iran’s underground Fordo uranium enrichment facility, considered to be out of reach to all but America’s “bunker-buster” bombs.

Whether or not the U.S. joins, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military operation in Iran would continue “for as long as it takes” to eliminate what he called the existential threat of Iran’s nuclear program and arsenal of ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, Tehran is ready to “consider diplomacy” again only once Israel’s “aggression is stopped”, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said following talks in Geneva with his European counterparts on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Smoke rises following an Israeli attack on the IRIB building, the country’s state broadcaster, in Tehran, Iran, June 16, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Highlights:

430 killed in more than week-long war, Iranian authorities say

Israel says it killed senior IRGC overseas commander

Iranian minister says attacks must stop for talks to restart

Missile interceptions visible in skies over Tel Aviv

At least 430 people have been killed and 3,500 injured in Iran since Israel began its attacks on 13 June, Iranian state-run Nour News said, citing the health ministry.

Hossein Kermanpour, head of public relations at Iran’s Health Ministry, said most of the casualties have been civilians.

“Among the injured, 2,220 have been treated and discharged from Ministry of Health hospitals, while 232 received outpatient care at the scene of the attacks. During this period, our dedicated medical teams across the country have performed 457 surgeries on the wounded,” he said in a statement on social media.

Meanwhile, in Israel, 24 civilians have been killed by Iranian missile attacks, Reuters reported citing local authorities.

Israel said on Saturday it had killed a veteran Iranian commander during attacks by both sides in the more than week-long air war, while Tehran said it would not negotiate over its nuclear programme while under threat.

Saeed Izadi, who led the Palestine Corps of the Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ overseas arm, was killed in a strike on an apartment in the Iranian city of Qom, said Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz.

Calling his killing a “major achievement for Israeli intelligence and the Air Force”, Katz said in a statement that Izadi had financed and armed the Palestinian militant group Hamas ahead of its October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza.

The Revolutionary Guards said five of its members died in attacks on Khorramabad, according to Iranian media. They did not mention Izadi, who was on US and British sanctions lists.

Israel says Iran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, while Iran says its atomic programme is only for peaceful purposes.

Israel is widely assumed to possess nuclear weapons, which it neither confirms nor denies.

IRAN: NO TALKS DURING ATTACKS

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Israel’s aggression, which he said had indications of US involvement, should stop so Iran can “come back to diplomacy”.

“It is obvious that I can’t go to negotiations with the US when our people are under bombardments under the support of the US,” he told reporters in Istanbul where he was attending a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

On Friday in Geneva, Araqchi met European foreign ministers who were seeking a path back to diplomacy.

President Donald Trump has said he would take up to two weeks to decide whether the United States should enter the conflict on Israel’s side, enough time “to see whether or not people come to their senses”, he said.

He said on Friday he thought Iran would be able to have a nuclear weapon “within a matter of weeks, or certainly within a matter of months”, adding: “We can’t let that happen.”

Iran’s Fars news agency said Israel had targeted the Isfahan nuclear facility, one of the nation’s biggest, but there was no leakage of hazardous materials. Israel said it had launched a wave of attacks against missile storage and launch infrastructure sites.

Ali Shamkhani, a close ally of Iran’s supreme leader, said he had survived an Israeli attack. “It was my fate to stay with a wounded body, so I stay to continue to be the reason for the enemy’s hostility,” he said in a message carried by state media.

INTERCEPTIONS OVER TEL AVIV

Early on Saturday, the Israeli military warned of an incoming barrage from Iran, triggering air raid sirens across parts of central Israel and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Interceptions were visible in the sky over Tel Aviv, with explosions echoing as Israel’s air defence systems responded. There were no reports of casualties.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based rights organisation that tracks Iran, gave a higher death toll than Tehran, saying Israeli attacks have killed 639 people there.

Those killed in Iran include the military’s top echelon and nuclear scientists. Israel said it also killed a second commander of the Guards’ overseas arm, whom it identified as Benham Shariyari, during an overnight strike.

Nour News on Saturday named 15 air defence officers and soldiers it said had been killed in the conflict with Israel.

Iran’s health minister, Mohammadreza Zafarqandi, said Israel has attacked three hospitals during the conflict, killing two health workers and a child, and has targeted six ambulances, according to Fars.

Asked about such reports, an Israeli military official said that only military targets were being struck, though there may have been collateral damage in some incidents.

An Iranian missile hit a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Thursday.

At the OIC meeting, where the Israel-Iran conflict topped the agenda, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Israel’s attacks on Iran right before a planned new round of nuclear talks with the US aimed to sabotage negotiations and showed Israel did not want to resolve issues through diplomacy.

Turkey, Russia and China have demanded immediate de-escalation.

The Geneva talks produced little signs of progress, and Trump said he doubted negotiators would be able to secure a ceasefire because “Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us.”

Trump said he was unlikely to press Israel, its close ally, to scale back its air strikes to allow negotiations to continue in part because it was “winning”.

“But we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.

Israel has said it will not stop attacks until it dismantles Iran’s nuclear programme and ballistic missile capabilities, which it views as an existential threat.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran was ready to discuss limitations on uranium enrichment but that it would reject any proposal that barred it from enriching uranium completely, “especially now under Israel’s strikes”.

Explained: What are the risks from Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure?

Israel’s stated goal in its fight with Iran is to dismantle its potential to build a nuclear weapon.

It isn’t clear if Israel has the military might to do it alone, with some of the key sites Iran is using to store and process nuclear material protected deep underground.

So far, Israel has conducted strikes on nuclear sites like Natanz, Khondab, Isfahan and Fordow.

Yesterday, Israel said it had struck the Bushehr site, Iran’s only active nuclear plant, before seemingly rowing back the comments.

But what are the risks from such attacks, and could they lead to a nuclear fallout of some kind in a region home to tens of millions of people?

Underground safety

Peter Bryant, a professor at the University of Liverpool who specialises in radiation protection science, said he was not too concerned about the risks so far.

While there had been strikes on the likes of Khondab, a lot of the damage reported so far is external, and such facilities are designed to contain internal issues.

“Uranium is only dangerous if it gets physically inhaled or ingested or gets into the body at low enrichments,” he said.

Nuclear material could end up buried

Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at London thinktank RUSI, said attacks on facilities at the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle – the enrichment stages where uranium is prepared for use in a reactor – pose primarily chemical, not radiological risks.

Sites like Natanz and Isfahan are enrichment sites.

Such chemicals could be dispersed, but such a risk is again lower with underground facilities.

Simon Bennett, who leads the civil safety and security unit at the University of Leicester in the UK, said Israeli strikes were likely to end up “burying nuclear material in possibly thousands of tonnes of concrete, earth and rock”.

Risk of ‘absolute catastrophe’ at power plant

The major concern would be if the Israelis attacked the Bushehr nuclear reactor.

Richard Wakeford, honorary professor of epidemiology at the University of Manchester, said that while enrichment facilities would remain a chemical issue, a reactor strike would be a “different story”.

This could lead to the release of radioactive elements either in a plume of volatile materials or into the sea, he added.

James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said an attack on Bushehr “could cause an absolute radiological catastrophe”.

Gulf State water supply could be vulnerable

For the Gulf States, any potential impact on Bushehr threatens to contaminate Gulf waters, jeopardising a critical source of desalinated potable water.

In a number of Gulf countries like the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, desalinated water accounts for a huge amount of drinking water.

Nidal Hilal, professor of engineering and director of New York University Abu Dhabi’s Water Research Centre, said: “Coastal desalination plants are especially vulnerable to regional hazards like oil spills and potential nuclear contamination.”