Israeli evacuation threat targets area around Iran’s Arak heavy-water nuclear reactor
The Associated Press (AP) news agency reports that the target of Israel’s recent evacuation threat in the vicinity of Arak and Khondab cities is Iran’s Arak heavy-water nuclear reactor.
According to AP, Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the Arak facility to relieve proliferation concerns. Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons.
Iran has said its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes, and Britain had previously been helping the Iranian government to redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, AP reports.
As part of negotiations around the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to sell off its heavy water to Western countries. Even the US purchased some 32 tonnes of heavy water for more than $8m in one deal, according to AP.
Israel’s air strikes have already targeted Iran’s nuclear site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran and a nuclear site in Isfahan.
The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has urged Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites.
IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14.
A view of the Arak heavy-water reactor in 2006
There are 44 operating heavy water reactors (PHWRs) in the world, with the majority being CANDU reactors. These reactors are primarily located in Canada, India, Argentina, South Korea, Romania, and Pakistan.
More than 80 percent of Jewish Israelis support war on Iran
Eighty-three percent of Jewish Israelis support the government’s war on Iran.
Before Benjamin Netanyahu launched those missiles towards Iran on Friday, his government was under enormous pressure over the war in Gaza – internationally, because of the number of Palestinians the Israelis were killing in Gaza, and domestically, because the Israeli government wasn’t getting the Israeli captives out of Gaza.
But now the focus has moved for Netanyahu to Iran, taking the pressure off him.
People like Avigdor Lieberman, hawkish on the right, who quit his cabinet post in 2018, is now saying Netanyahu is doing the right thing.
Benny Gantz, who quit the cabinet last summer over the war in Gaza, now says on Iran there is no right or left – only right or wrong, and “we are right”.
Thirteen years ago, in 2012, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points to a red line he drew on a cartoonish graphic of a bomb used to represent where he claimed Iran’s nuclear programme was at in terms of producing a nuclear weapon, as he addressed the 67th United Nations General Assembly at in New York, on September 27, 2012
Explosions reported in Iranian cities Tehran, Karaj
As we reported a short while ago, the Israeli military has announced that it is carrying out a new wave of attacks on Iran.
Strikes have been reported in the capital, Tehran, while explosions have also been heard near the city of Karaj, west of Tehran, according to a reporter on the ground with Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen.
The correspondent added that Iranian air defences are currently intercepting Israeli targets in the skies over Karaj and its outskirts.
Israeli attacks on Iran kill at least 639, injure more than 1,320: Rights group
The Washington-based group Human Rights Activists said at least 639 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across Iran as the conflict enters its seventh day.
The group, which also provided detailed casualty figures during the 2022 antigovernment protests in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amin, said it had identified 263 civilians and 154 security force personnel among the total number of those killed so far in Israel’s attacks.
Casualty figures were crosschecked with local reports in Iran against a network of sources developed in the country, the group said.
Iran has not given regular death toll figures during the ongoing intense attacks by Israel. Its last update put the death toll at 224 people killed and 1,277 others wounded in Israeli strikes.
