Russia has already carried out three waves of evacuation from the Bushehr nuclear plant, Iran’s only operational nuclear facility. Of the 700+ Russian workers there at the start of the war, Rosatom plans to leave only “a few dozen” to keep equipment running.

The plant has already been hit. A projectile struck 200 meters from the operational unit on March 17. Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev was blunt: “A strike on Bushehr, where there are 70 metric tons of nuclear fuel and 210 metric tons of spent fuel, would cause a regional-scale catastrophe from which no one would emerge unscathed.”

Meanwhile, Russian state TV is openly discussing nuclear war. Vladimir Solovyov warned that “everyone who has nuclear weapons will use them” and called U.S. policy “absolute evil.” RT chief Margarita Simonyan predicted “nuclear war” followed by “end times.”