DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Bomb-carrying drones targeted an Iranian defense factory in the central city of Isfahan overnight, authorities said early Sunday, causing some damage to the factory amid heightened regional and international tensions engulfing the Islamic Republic .
Iran’s defense ministry has not provided information on who is believed to have carried out the attack, which occurred when a refinery fire broke out separately in the country’s northwest and a magnitude-5.9 earthquake nearby, killing two people. came.
However, Tehran has been the target of suspected Israeli drone strikes amid a shadow war with its Middle Eastern rival as its nuclear deal with world powers collapsed. Meanwhile, tensions remain high with neighboring Azerbaijan after a gunman attacked that country’s embassy in Tehran, killing its security chief and wounding two others.
Details about the attack in Isfahan, which took place around 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, remained scarce. A statement from the Department of Defense describes that three drones were launched at the facility, two of which were successfully shot down. A third apparently managed to hit the building, causing “minor damage” to the roof and not injuring anyone, the ministry said.
The English-language arm of Iran’s state television, Press TV, broadcast cell phone videos that apparently showed the moment the drone struck along the busy Imam Khomeini Expressway running northwest out of Isfahan, one of many ways drivers get to the holy city of Qom and Tehran, the capital of Iran. A small crowd gathered, attracted by anti-aircraft fire, and watched as an explosion and sparks hit a dark building.
“Oh my God! That was a drone, wasn’t it?” shouts the filming man. “Yes, it was a drone.”
Who fled there after the strike.
That footage of the strike, as well as footage of the aftermath analyzed by The Associated Press, matched a site on Minoo Street in northwestern Isfahan, near a shopping center with a carpet and electronics store.
Iran’s defense and nuclear sites are increasingly surrounded by commercial properties and residential areas as the country’s cities continue to expand. Some locations also remain incredibly opaque about what they produce, displaying only a sign with the logo of the Department of Defense or the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards.
The Department of Defense merely referred to the location as a “workshop,” without commenting on what created it. Some 350 kilometers (215 mi) south of Tehran, Isfahan is home to both a large air base built for its fleet of American-made F-14 fighter jets and the Nuclear Fuel Research and Production Center.
Separately, Iranian state television said a fire had broken out at an oil refinery in an industrial area near the northwestern city of Tabriz. It said the cause was not yet known as it showed footage of firefighters trying to put out the blaze.
State television also said the 5.9-magnitude earthquake killed two people and injured about 580 others in rural areas in West Azerbaijan province, damaging buildings in many villages.
Iran and Israel have long been embroiled in a shadow war that has included covert attacks on Iranian military and nuclear facilities.
Last year, Iran said an engineer was killed and another worker injured in an unexplained incident at the Parchin military and weapons development base east of the capital Tehran. The ministry spoke of an accident, without giving further details.
Parchin is home to a military base where the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects Iran conducted tests of explosive triggers that could be used in nuclear weapons.
In April 2021, Iran blamed Israel for an attack on its underground nuclear power plant in Natanz that damaged its centrifuges.
Israel did not claim responsibility for the attack, but Israeli media widely reported that the country orchestrated a devastating cyber-attack that caused a blackout at the nuclear facility. Israeli officials rarely acknowledge operations carried out by the country’s covert military units or Mossad intelligence.
In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for a sophisticated attack that killed its chief nuclear scientist.
Iran has always maintained that its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes. US intelligence agencies, Western countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency have said that until 2003 Iran ran an organized nuclear weapons program.
The United Nations’ top nuclear official, Rafael Mariano Grossi, recently warned that Iran has enough highly enriched uranium to build “multiple” nuclear weapons if it wants to.
Attempts to revive a 2015 agreement with world powers that placed limits on Iran’s nuclear activities stalled last year. Both the US and Israel have vowed to prevent Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons, and neither is ruling out military action.
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Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss contributed to this report.
