IDF confirms bombing Iran’s heavy water reactor, ‘key’ nuclear facility, in Arak

The IDF confirms bombing Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, saying it targeted the “key infrastructure for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons” after Iran worked to restore the site.

The Israeli Air Force had bombed the partially built complex, officially known as the Khondab Heavy Water Research Reactor, in central Iran during the June 2025 war.

“Repeated reconstruction attempts by the Iranian terror regime at the site were later identified. Therefore, the IDF has struck the facility once again,” the military says.

The IDF issued a warning ahead of today’s strike on the Arak reactor and urged residents in nearby areas to flee.

The Arak site was originally designed in a way that would make it capable of easily producing plutonium, which could be used to produce nuclear arms.

Under the 2015 agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, the heavy water plant was redesigned to reduce the nuclear weaponization risk, and its core was removed and filled with concrete.

The IDF says in a statement that even in its current state the heavy water “can also be used as a neutron source for nuclear weapons” and that “despite explicit international commitments, foremost among them the nuclear agreement, the Iranian terror regime has systematically avoided converting the reactor so that it would not enable the production of weapons-grade plutonium, and even deliberately ordered that the conversion not be completed.”

The IDF says the plant was also a “significant economic asset for the terror regime and served as a source of income for the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, generating tens of millions of dollars for the regime each year.”