Bitcoin Steadies Near $65,000 as Fresh Airstrikes Hit Iran’s Khondab Site

Two airstrikes hit an area outside Khondab, Iran, at around 3:30 a.m. local time on Thursday, striking near a heavy water complex that United Nations inspectors had already declared destroyed once this year. Bitcoin, trading near a three-week high above $65,000, barely moved.

The strikes are the latest in a run of near-daily attacks between the United States and Iran that stretches back more than a week, part of a war that began on February 28 and has already outlasted three separate ceasefires. Crypto’s calm reaction is not an accident. Traders have been documenting the shift strike by strike, and it rests on an assumption that a single unresolved nuclear question could still break.

Two Strikes, One Reactor Complex Already in Ruins

Two projectiles struck a location outside Khondab early Thursday, the deputy governor of Markazi province told Iran’s state news agency IRNA. Iranian media had reported hearing explosions in the area before officials confirmed it.

The area sits next to the Shahid Khondab Heavy Water Complex, home to the IR-40 heavy water research reactor. The site has drawn international scrutiny for years over its potential to help produce plutonium suitable for weapons use.

What the IAEA Already Found

This was not the first hit on the complex. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Khondab’s heavy water plant had already sustained severe damage and gone offline after a strike on March 27, and that the plant held no declared nuclear material at the time.

The agency has kept a dedicated channel open for its verification and monitoring work in Iran, though its access to sites has been sharply limited since the war began. Iranian state media said a separate strike had already hit a military base in the Khondab area on July 11, just days before Thursday’s attack on the same district.

The Khondab strikes were not isolated Thursday. Jordan’s air defenses intercepted eight Iranian missiles fired at the kingdom, officials there said, while a provincial official reported a projectile hit Semnan Airport and residents in Khorramabad reported hearing explosions overnight.

What We Know

• The location: Two projectiles hit an area outside Khondab around 3:30 a.m. Thursday, according to Markazi province’s deputy governor.
• The target’s history: The IAEA already found the site’s heavy water plant severely damaged and non operational after the March 27 strike, with no declared nuclear material on hand at that time.
• The wider night: The same hours brought explosions in Khorramabad, a strike on Semnan Airport, and Jordan intercepting eight Iranian missiles.

What’s Unconfirmed

• New damage: Whether Thursday’s strikes hit the reactor complex itself again or a separate target nearby.
• Casualties: No injury or death toll specific to the Khondab strike had been reported as of Thursday morning.
• IAEA assessment: The agency had not issued a public statement on the latest strike as of Thursday.

Whatever happened at Khondab this time will be hard to verify quickly. A June safeguards report reviewed by the Institute for Science and International Security said the IAEA cannot verify the status of Iran’s heavy water production program at all, alongside its enrichment and plutonium reprocessing activity, because Tehran suspended access after February 28.

The agency said it “cannot provide any information on the current size, composition or whereabouts of the stockpile of enriched uranium in Iran.” Before access was cut off, inspectors had verified 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, far beyond what civilian reactors use. Where that material sits today is unknown outside Tehran.

Why Bitcoin Barely Moved This Time

Bitcoin traded near $65,024 on Wednesday, up more than 3 percent in 24 hours after a softer than expected June inflation reading, before easing slightly as tensions ramped back up, CoinDesk reported. Ether held near its highest level since June 3.

That calm would have seemed unthinkable a year ago. Bitcoin is down roughly 31 percent so far this year even as the S&P 500 has gained about 9 percent, and it sits nearly 50 percent below the $126,000 peak it hit last October, while gold, the asset it was supposed to rival as a crisis hedge, kept climbing.

The table below tracks Bitcoin’s reaction to each round of strikes since the last ceasefire collapsed on July 8. The pattern is one of steadily shrinking reactions.

Only the July 8 shock produced a clean sell-off. Every round since has produced either a shrug or, by July 15, an outright rally, with Bitcoin rising through a wave of strikes on the back of a cooler inflation report rather than despite one.

Iran’s Crypto Underground Is Having a Different War

The muted price action in New York and London does not describe what is happening inside Iran. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has tracked more than $7.78 billion in Iranian crypto activity in 2025 alone, with wallets tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) accounting for over $3 billion of that total.

The US Treasury sanctioned Nobitex, Iran’s largest crypto exchange, on June 2 for processing transactions tied to the IRGC and Iran’s central bank. The designation barred American persons and firms from dealing with the platform at all.

TRM Labs, a blockchain analytics firm tracking the fallout, said Iranian exchanges have processed more than $11 billion in transaction volume since the start of 2025, even as the war forced several platforms into damage control mode.

• Nobitex, Wallex and Tabdeal briefly halted their USDT-toman trading pair on orders from Iran’s central bank.
• Exchanges paced withdrawals and tightened leverage limits to manage a sudden spike in liquidation risk.
• Order books thinned once the pair reopened, producing short-lived price dislocations traders had to work through by hand.

Ordinary Iranians have leaned harder on offshore platforms as Western exchanges retreat, with CoinEx stepping in as Iran’s crypto gateway after Binance pulled back from the market. For citizens facing hyperinflation and capital controls, digital assets function as a lifeline. For Western institutional traders, the same asset is a risk position to trim the moment headlines turn ugly. Both things are true at once.

A Familiar Pattern Since Soleimani

1. January 2020: The US killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani; Bitcoin sold off before recovering within days, and ether followed a similar path.
2. June 2025: Strikes on Iranian targets sent Bitcoin, then trading near $107,000, down nearly 4 percent before it recovered within weeks.
3. February 28, 2026: The US and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites, opening the current war in a campaign Al Jazeera reported killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
4. March 27, 2026: Strikes hit the Khondab heavy water complex directly, an attack the IAEA later confirmed caused severe damage.
5. June 17, 2026: Washington and Tehran reached a ceasefire, the latest in a series of brief truces since the war began.
6. July 11, 2026: Iranian state media said another strike hit a military base in the Khondab area, days before Thursday’s attack on the same district.

Iran’s nuclear ambitions extend well past Khondab. Tehran signed a $25 billion contract with Russia’s Rosatom in September 2025 to build four more reactors elsewhere in the country, a reminder that the current campaign is aimed at only part of a much larger program.

Crypto has already lived through one version of this week’s relief rally. Bitcoin briefly topped $65,500 after an earlier US-Iran de-escalation, though ETF demand never fully confirmed that move, a pattern that looks close to repeating as price climbs back toward the same level now.

Is Bitcoin Still a Geopolitical Hedge?

Not the way early crypto marketing promised. Spot Bitcoin ETF ownership has rewired the asset’s short-term driver toward Federal Reserve policy and dollar liquidity, analysts say, so war headlines now produce brief, leveraged flushes rather than sustained selling, a shift visible in this week’s liquidation data.

Total Bitcoin liquidations hit $73.15 million on July 13 alone, and long positions made up the overwhelming share of it, according to CoinGlass data cited by crypto outlet Blockhead. Longs were wiped out roughly six times as often as shorts.

Longs are being liquidated six times as often as shorts

Saeed Al-Marri, chief executive of Ethra Invest, told Forbes that imbalance points to bullish bets getting flushed out on margin calls, not a broad exit from the asset. Roy Kashi, co-founder and chief executive of FalconEdge, pointed separately to rising oil prices and fading rate-cut expectations as the reason traders trimmed risk exposure rather than any judgment on crypto itself.

The clearest sign that war headlines have taken a back seat arrived on July 13, when a reversal in the Asia chip trade, not that day’s strike wave, set crypto’s direction. A rally in Asia-Pacific chip stocks had lifted Bitcoin on Friday, and its sharp reversal on Monday, when SK Hynix shares plunged 12 percent in Seoul and the Kospi fell 7 percent, still left crypto flat in either direction.

Bigger Triggers Than the Next Strike Are Lining Up

None of this means Bitcoin has stopped watching Iran. It means the variables that matter have shifted.

Oil is the fastest-moving one. Prices have swung between $72 and the triple digits seen earlier in the war, and the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil, has seen daily traffic fall to roughly 24 ships since the US blockade returned, according to PortWatch data. A sustained move back toward $100 oil would revive the inflation math that keeps the Fed cautious.

The Fed’s next meeting falls on July 28 and 29, and traders are still digesting Tuesday’s softer inflation print. A separate wildcard sits in the Senate, where the CLARITY Act, a bill setting market structure rules for crypto, awaits a floor vote that Majority Leader John Thune has not yet scheduled. Prediction market Polymarket has priced the odds of passage this year at roughly 48 to 55 percent.

Stablecoin supply is the quieter warning sign. The market shrank by $7.7 billion in June to about $312 billion, its steepest monthly drop since TerraUSD collapsed in 2022. Less stablecoin supply means less dry powder sitting on the sidelines to buy the next dip.

Every ceasefire in this conflict has been shorter than the last one. The next thing likely to move Bitcoin out of its current range is not another strike near Khondab. It is whether the IAEA ever gets back inside to see what is actually still there.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the IR-40 reactor at Khondab?

The IR-40 is a heavy water research reactor at the Shahid Khondab complex in Markazi province. Its adjoining production plant and distillation unit have drawn scrutiny for years because heavy water reactors can produce plutonium suitable for weapons if their spent fuel is reprocessed, and the IAEA said the plant was already severely damaged and non operational after the March 27 strike.

Did the IAEA confirm damage from Thursday’s strike?

Not as of Thursday. The agency’s most recent public assessment covered the March strike, and its broader June safeguards report already said it cannot verify Iran’s heavy water production status at all because Tehran suspended access after February 28.

Why didn’t Bitcoin crash the way it did during past Iran strikes?

Spot Bitcoin ETF ownership is the biggest difference from 2020 or even mid-2025. Analysts say that ownership base now ties Bitcoin’s short-term moves to Federal Reserve policy and dollar liquidity more than to war headlines, so a strike that once triggered a fast sell-off now produces only a brief liquidation flush.

What is Nobitex and why was it sanctioned?

Nobitex was Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange until the US Treasury sanctioned it on June 2 for processing transactions linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s central bank, barring American persons and firms from dealing with the platform.

What is the CLARITY Act and how does it relate to this story?

The CLARITY Act is pending Senate legislation that would set market structure rules for crypto trading in the United States. It has nothing to do with Iran directly, but its unscheduled floor vote is one of the domestic catalysts traders are weighing alongside the war when deciding how much risk to hold.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment or legal advice. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Consult a qualified financial professional before making investment decisions. Figures in this article are accurate as of the time of publication and may have changed.