Reducing the Coercive Salience of Military Threats Against Civilian Nuclear Infrastructure

The risks of using military force against nuclear facilities have received considerable attention in recent months and years, prompted by the Russian occupation of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of the country. The use of military force against, or in the vicinity of, nuclear installations is not a new phenomenon. Iraqi strikes on Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant—then under construction—during the Iran-Iraq War, and Israeli attacks on both Iraq’s Osirak research reactor and Syria’s al-Kibar site, are among some of the better known earlier cases of armed attacks on nuclear facilities.