Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, located on the Persian Gulf coast roughly 17 kilometers southeast of Bushehr city. This 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor power plant constructed with Russian support is not just an Iranian asset, it is a Gulf’s liability. Any attack on Bushehr would cause snowball consequences that no Gulf government no matter how well-prepared could fully contain.
IAEA is concerned about Bushehr as any attack could pose unrecoverable damage. The plant has holds thousands of kilograms of nuclear material. Rosatom (the Russian nuclear corporation) estimates that Bushehr has a vast reserve of radioactive material (72 tonnes of active fuel and a further 210 tonnes of spent fuel on-site).
CSIS analyze that a direct strike or even destroying the two power lines could meltdown the core reactor, releasing iodine-131 and cesium-137 across Iran and into nearby Gulf states. IAEA estimated a worst-case scenario which would require evacuation to hundred kilometers, including population centers in various Gulf countries. Authorities also need to administer iodine to civilians, restrict food supplies, and implement radiation monitoring across international borders.
Researchers from Science and Global Security modelling spent fuel fire scenarios found that Kuwait City, Basrah, and Ahvaz face significant contamination probabilities from a Bushehr release, with cesium-137 levels exceeding 1.5 MBq/m² in worst-case wind conditions.
The Persian Gulf is not only a body of water, it supplies freshwater. Qatar and Bahrain are 100% reliant on desalinated seawater for drinking. The UAE depends on desalination for over 80% of its supply. Saudi Arabia, for roughly 50%. Desalination plants are not designed to filter radioactive elements. Radiation contamination of Gulf waters would render these desalination intakes unusable at high pace. This will not affect the Gulf residents who depend on this water but also aquatic life that can be seriously harmed if the attack is made on Bushehr facility.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani stated in early 2025 that Qatar had already run simulations of a Bushehr attack scenario. The outcomes demonstrated that the entire Gulf would be contaminated and Qatar would run out of drinking water within three days. That’s not an exaggeration, it is an estimate from one of the Gulf’s most sophisticated governments.
The Persian Gulf has a semi-enclosed geography. Radioactive contamination could persist in Gulf waters for years or even decades, compromising desalination infrastructure permanently except extraordinarily expensive remediation is undertaken. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists notes that desalination technologies can remove cesium and sodium, but not at scale, and not under emergency.
Bushehr also locates in a seismically active corridors. The plant situates near the junction of tectonic plates, beside the border between the Arabian Plate and the Eurasian Plate. The adjacent Zagros area often generates moderate-to-strong earthquakes.
The plant can withstand a magnitude 8 earthquake without a major damage, and endure up to magnitude 9. However, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists indicates that Bushehr is aging with a complex construction history. During construction, it was repeatedly bombed amid the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and completed by Russians without compatible specifications.
Military strikes in the adjacent area (power grids, pipelines, and transport corridors) could escalate the risks of seismic events by disabling backup cooling systems at precisely the moment an earthquake compromises primary ones. The Fukushima disaster, triggered by the loss of backup power following a tsunami, provides the cautionary template.
A Fragile Target
Bushehr presents a hydrological and radiological case. Contamination not just a problem for Iran but it risks water security of 50 million people living in a dry region. Bushehr is not just a nuclear facility. It is a loaded weapon toward Gulf.
