Iranian health authorities have begun distributing iodine tablets to people living near the country’s nuclear facilities, a civil defence precaution against radiation exposure should the United States strike those sites.
The tablets protect the thyroid gland from radioactive iodine, which the body absorbs in a radiological emergency. A Ministry of Health official said Iran seeks to distribute them within a radius of two to three kilometres of nuclear facilities in wartime, Al Jazeera reported.
Distribution has reached residents of the southern city of Bushehr, home to Iran’s only operational nuclear power plant.
Hiru News reported the same measure, describing it as preparation for a radiological emergency and saying the programme is targeted at populations living around the areas where nuclear plants are sited, Bushehr among them. It said health ministry officials had confirmed they were watching the possibility of military action by the US administration closely.
What is driving it
A health ministry official quoted by the UK Times and relayed by Al Jazeera put the reasoning bluntly: “Trump can no longer be trusted. He may go through with this crime.”
Al Jazeera reports that Iran’s Young Journalists Club has said a US nuclear strike on Pickaxe Mountain — a heavily fortified site believed to sit above a large tunnel complex — is being “seriously considered” by the Trump administration.
Al Jazeera’s wider piece frames Tehran’s public posture as “cognitive warfare”: using rhetoric and deliberately calibrated responses to keep Washington uncertain about how Iran would retaliate, and so narrow the range of military options Trump is willing to take. It quotes Hassan Ahmadian of the University of Tehran, former Iranian diplomat Hadi Afghahi, and Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari.
Why it matters here
The war has been a running factor in Sri Lanka’s import costs all year, chiefly through the Strait of Hormuz. A move to civil defence preparations around nuclear sites signals escalation rather than any winding down, days after the United States formed a task force to cut Iran’s overland supply routes — an extension of the months-long naval blockade that has repeatedly moved fuel prices.
Not reported
Neither source gives the number of tablets distributed, the date the programme began, or how many people it covers; figures circulating on unverified sites are not reproduced here. Neither says whether distribution extends beyond Bushehr to other nuclear sites, and neither reports any comment from the IAEA, the US administration or the Bushehr plant’s operator. The claim about Pickaxe Mountain rests on an Iranian outlet’s account of a briefing and has not been confirmed by Washington.
