A drone attack on the UAE’s Barakh nuclear power and earlier strikes against Iran’s Bushehr NPP in the Israel US Iran war risk severe radiological dangers

By Tariq Rauf

17 May 2026

Atomic Reporters’ Tariq Rauf, former Head of Verification and Security Policy at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), describes the possible radiological consequences of drone and missile attacks on operating nuclear power plants.

The deliberate targeting of nuclear power plants (NPPs) by armed drones represents one of the most consequential and under-examined threats in contemporary security studies. While international humanitarian law and the guidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have long prohibited attacks on civilian nuclear infrastructure, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has transformed these prohibitions from theoretical concerns into acute operational realities. Two incidents in particular have crystallised global attention on the radiological stakes involved: the drone strike on the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on 17 May 2026—the first armed attack on any nuclear facility on the Arabian Peninsula—and the series of projectile and drone strikes in proximity to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant on the Persian Gulf coast of Iran, which began following the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran on 28 February 2026 and have continued intermittently since.

At Barakah, a drone—one of three that entered UAE territory from the western border—penetrated air defences and struck an electrical generator outside the plant’s inner perimeter, igniting a fire and forcing one reactor unit to rely on emergency diesel generators, though UAE authorities and the IAEA confirmed that radiation levels remained normal and all four APR1400 reactor units continued operating.

At Bushehr, Iranian authorities reported multiple strikes on or near the plant’s premises since late February 2026, prompting the Russian State nuclear operator Rosatom to conduct successive evacuations of its personnel, while IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi convened an emergency Board of Governors session and issued an unambiguous warning that a direct hit on the operating reactor could cause a severe radiological accident with “possibility of dispersion in the atmosphere of radioactivity” affecting an area potentially larger than a major city, and extending well beyond Iranian borders.

Taken together, these events demand a rigorous and systematic assessment of the radiological hazards that armed attacks on nuclear power plants pose—to civilian populations, to neighbouring States, to the global environment—and of the profound gaps in the current international legal and institutional architecture that have allowed such attacks to occur with a degree of impunity.

Read Tariq Rauf’s full assessment here:

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About the author

Tariq Rauf is an independent advisor and consultant on nuclear governance matter and a Director of Atomic Reporters and of Canadian Pugwash. He is also a former Head of Nuclear Verification and Security Policy at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

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Title graph: International Atomic Energy Agency, International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale