US and international probes on bombed nuclear sites will be a scientific nightmare in Iran, while Tehran retaliates too — Phar Kim Beng

JUNE 22 — When President Donald Trump ordered coordinated airstrikes — likely in concert with Israel — on Iran's nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan in mid-June 2025, the reverberations were not just geopolitical.
They were scientific, environmental and humanitarian. The attack on these fortified nuclear sites, some buried 80 metres deep into Iranian mountains, was reportedly executed using GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, or so-called 'bunker buster bombs'.
The consequences of such actions are only just beginning to unfold. While the strategic intent might have been to permanently degrade Iran's capacity to enrich uranium or build nuclear weapons, the cost of these strikes will be paid not just in political capital — but in the ability of scientists, inspectors and humanitarian actors to make sense of the damage, assess the risk and contain any radiological fallout.
What lies ahead is a scientific and diplomatic nightmare, one that may take years to resolve. These would be some amidst Tehran's promise of more retaliation the likes of which the US and Israel have not seen.
Indeed, if one were to look at Fukushima in Japan. To this day, more than a decade later, the full containment of the fallout from the Daiichi Nuclear Plant is still uncertain.
Leading to copious doubts about the purity of the water and seafood emerging from that area. That is not unless multiple scientific authorities have been able to verify their untainted quality. But Fukushima was not bombed. The sea water overflooded its nuclear energy plant. In Iran, the nuclear sites are turned into a total wreck.
But did the bombs actually do the job at all three sites? And there are many more. Thus the situation in Iran is serious and not as flippant as what the Trump administration has made it out to be.
Unfathomable complexity of verifying damage
First, consider the scientific dimensions. International inspectors, particularly those from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), now face a profoundly altered landscape. Pre-strike, these nuclear facilities were under partial IAEA monitoring, even if Iran had steadily limited access since the collapse of the JCPOA.
Post-strike, the destruction of key installations — tunnels, centrifuge halls, radioactive storage units — means that any baseline of comparison is now gone.
Without intact facilities, it becomes nearly impossible to determine what was being produced, how much enriched material has been destroyed or dispersed and — most worryingly — what radioactive material might now be unaccounted for. In a worst-case scenario, uranium hexafluoride gas or plutonium residues may have been aerosolised or buried beneath tonnes of concrete rubble, exposing both the local population and international experts to long-term contamination.
Unlike inspections in peaceful conditions, post-bombing forensics in nuclear environments is fraught with danger. Radiation levels can spike unpredictably due to damaged shielding or ruptured storage chambers. The same instruments used to detect radiation — Geiger counters, spectrometers — can malfunction in unstable debris zones. Protective suits only go so far; cumulative exposure is a near certainty.
Legal and normative breach
Secondly, this episode constitutes a profound rupture of international law and scientific protocol. Iran is still a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Striking its nuclear infrastructure, even with claims of preemptive self-defence, undermines the very principles of international safeguards.
IAEA verification relies on cooperation, transparency and physical access. Once these are obliterated by force, the norm of peaceful nuclear oversight is severely weakened. Worse still, it may set a precedent: any state with suspicions — founded or not — could feel emboldened to take kinetic action rather than pursue diplomacy or technical verification.
The United States, which has withdrawn from multiple arms control agreements over the last decade (the JCPOA in 2018, the INF Treaty in 2019), has now removed any fig leaf of credibility as a steward of non-proliferation norms. The bombings send a message that compliance is no longer a shield against aggression, and that suspicion, not verification, determines military action.
Iran's scientific infrastructure in ruins
The tragedy is compounded by the loss of Iran's highly trained nuclear workforce and academic infrastructure. These facilities were not merely military installations. They were also research hubs — employing physicists, engineers, technicians and students. While the West tends to view Iran's nuclear programme solely through a security lens, for Iranians, it has also been a symbol of scientific independence and sovereignty.
Now, with laboratories flattened and likely contaminated, it may take generations to rebuild the human capital and trust needed to resume even peaceful nuclear research.
Furthermore, Iran's reluctance to invite inspectors after the bombing is understandable — yet it will be used as propaganda by the US and Israel to justify further action. In truth, no sovereign country would willingly invite foreign probes into bombed-out, unstable zones that might still be leaking radiation or secondary explosives. The absence of verification post-strike is not Iran's sole fault — it is a direct consequence of the preemptive aggression against it.
Smoke rises following an Israeli attack in Tehran, Iran, June 18, 2025. — Reuters pic
Environmental catastrophe in the making
Environmental scientists warn that even in controlled nuclear facilities, minute leaks can have long-term consequences. In a post-strike environment, uncontrolled leakage is virtually guaranteed.
Fordow and Natanz are located near populated regions. The contamination of aquifers, soil and air cannot be ruled out. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster — caused not by bombs but by human error — led to widespread contamination across Europe. In Iran, where containment has been violently breached, we may see similar risks, though on a localised scale.
The use of high-yield bunker busters may also have destabilised underground water tables and soil compositions. Without access to geological surveys and radiation data — which Tehran is unlikely to release in the immediate aftermath — the true scale of the damage may remain unknown for years. Trump's post-strikes conference took few minutes to wrap up.
Surrounded by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, cum the National Security Advisor and Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth, and Vice President JD Vance. The four horsemen may have heralded in the apocalypse which they needed to hurry back into their Situation Room to assess the actual damage.
Diplomatic isolation and scientific paralysis
For now the larger consequence is that international scientific cooperation with Iran will now grind to a halt. Academic exchanges, technology-sharing arrangements and collaborative energy research will vanish. Any Iranian scientist seen working on nuclear technology — regardless of purpose — will now be treated as suspect.
This will only deepen Iran's scientific isolation, pushing it closer to autarky or toward alliances with China and Russia. In effect, what the bombings have done is not prevent proliferation, but dismantle the very framework of international engagement that had made diplomacy possible in the first place.
Asean and the moral dimension
As Asean Chair, Malaysia has the responsibility to take a firm stance. Not against Iran — but against the erosion of peaceful scientific norms. The use of military force to dismantle nuclear infrastructure, especially in the absence of clear evidence of weaponisation, sets a dangerous precedent for the Global South.
If the Middle East becomes a theatre where nuclear energy programmes are no longer protected by international law, then smaller states may reconsider peaceful nuclear energy programmes altogether — for fear that they may one day become targets of 'preemptive' destruction.
Asean must rally its member states to call for independent, neutral inspections once conditions allow — not led by NATO countries but by a coalition of non-aligned experts from states like Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa.
Conclusion: A scientific disaster with no end in sight
The tragedy of the bombed nuclear sites in Iran is not just about diplomacy or war — it is about a fundamental breach of how the world cooperates to avoid the horrors of nuclear conflict.
What we are now witnessing is the collapse of decades of scientific verification, shredded by a few bombing runs and sealed by political arrogance. The IAEA will struggle to re-establish credibility. Iran will entrench itself in scientific secrecy. And the world will have moved one step closer to normalising the unacceptable: the bombing of science in the name of security.
* Phar Kim Beng is Professor of Asean Studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia and a former Head Teaching Fellow at Harvard University.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.

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