Iran’s Arak nuclear facility was the target of an attack, Iranian officials said late on Friday (27) local time, according to Iranian state media Fars News.
An official in Iran’s Markazi province said the attack was carried out by US and Israeli forces, adding that there were no casualties due to security measures taken in advance.
The reported attack comes shortly after the Israeli army issued an attack on Iranians located northwest of the city of Arak and in the Khir Abad Industrial Zone, areas close to the nuclear facility.
The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) released a statement on X in Farsi, warning civilians that they would attack Iranian military infrastructure in the region, without specifying the exact targets.
The Israeli army later claimed responsibility for the attack on the dormant Arak reactor, citing “repeated reconstruction attempts by the Iranian terrorist regime”.
The Arak heavy water reactor was still under construction last year, according to the IAEA.
Plans to build the reactor had raised concerns in Israel and the West that heavy water could be used to produce plutonium, a pathway to a possible nuclear bomb.
Under the now-defunct Iran nuclear deal, Tehran agreed in 2015 to modify construction plans for the facility to block the plutonium pathway.
In June last year, Israel attacked the under-construction reactor at the Arak complex during its 12-day war with Iran. At the time, the IAEA said the reactor was not operational and did not contain any nuclear material.
