The United Nations Security Council has condemned an attack on the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant in the United Arab Emirates, saying it constituted a violation of international law, according to a statement reported by Reuters. The council did not attribute blame for the attack.
The UAE said last week that six drones had been launched against it from Iraq, including one that targeted the nuclear power plant in the Gulf state. Iraq is home to powerful Iranian-backed militia groups that have claimed attacks against “enemy bases in Iraq and the region” during the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
Barakah, on the Abu Dhabi coast, is the Arab world’s first operational nuclear power plant, built by South Korea’s KEPCO and supplying a substantial share of the UAE’s electricity. A strike on such a facility raises safeguards concerns beyond the question of international law, though the report cited no reactor damage or radiation release.
The condemnation comes amid sharp escalation in the wider conflict. U.S. Central Command this week struck Iranian mine-laying boats and a Bandar Abbas air-defence site, and the IRGC shot down a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Strait of Hormuz. A tanker explosion off Oman followed an Iranian vow of retaliation. The Barakah strike differs from those events in directing fire at the UAE, a Gulf state outside the immediate U.S.-Iran exchange.
