Dubai, May 18:
A drone strike targeted the United Arab Emirates’ sole nuclear power plant on Sunday, sparking a fire on its perimeter. There were no reports of injuries or radiological release, but it highlighted the risk of renewed war as the Iran ceasefire remains tenuous.
No one immediately claimed responsibility, and the UAE did not blame anyone. It has, however, accused Iran of launching multiple drone and missile attacks in recent days as tensions have risen over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital energy waterway that Iran still has in a chokehold.
The United States is blockading Iranian ports, and diplomatic efforts aimed at a more durable peace have repeatedly faltered. The UAE has meanwhile hosted air defences and personnel from Israel, which joined the US in the Feb. 28 attack that sparked the war.
US President Donald Trump has suggested hostilities could resume, and Iranian state television has repeatedly aired segments with anchors holding Kalashnikov-style rifles in an effort to prepare the public for war. Fighting has also heated up between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon despite a nominal ceasefire there, further straining the wider truce.
The USD 20 billion Barakah nuclear power plant was built by the UAE with the help of South Korea and went online in 2020. It is the first and only nuclear power plant in the Arab world and can provide a quarter of all the energy needs in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms.
The UAE’s nuclear regulator said the fire didn’t affect plant safety. “All units are operating as normal,” the organisation wrote on X.
The UAE statement didn’t blame any party for the attack. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, said the strike caused a fire in an electrical generator and that one reactor was being powered by emergency diesel generators.
IAEA director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi expressed “grave concern” about the incident and said military activity that threatens nuclear safety is unacceptable, the agency said in a statement.
Sunday’s strike marked the first time the four-reactor Barakah plant has been targeted in the war. It is near the border with Saudi Arabia, some 225 kilometres (140 miles) west of the UAE’s capital city, Abu Dhabi.
Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, whom the UAE have battled as part of a Saudi-led coalition, claimed to have targeted the plant while it was under construction in 2017, something denied at the time by Abu Dhabi.
The UAE signed a strict deal with the US over the power plant, known as a “123 agreement,” in which it agreed to give up domestic uranium enrichment and reprocessing of spent fuel to halt any proliferation fears. Its uranium comes from abroad.
That’s very different from the nuclear programme in Iran, which is at the heart of its long-running conflict with the United States and Israel.
Iran insists its programme is for peaceful purposes, but it has enriched its own uranium close to weapons-grade levels and is widely suspected of having had a military component to its programme until at least 2003. It has also often restricted the work of UN inspectors.
Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed country in the region, but has neither confirmed nor denied having atomic weapons. Iran struck near Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility during the war.
Nuclear plants have increasingly been targeted in wars in recent years, including during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. During the Iran war, Tehran repeatedly claimed its Bushehr nuclear power plant came under attack, though there was no direct damage to its Russian-run reactor or any radiological release.