A deadly explosion at Iran’s Parchin military complex on Wednesday was caused by suicide drones with a quadcopter in an attack that follows a pattern of previous strikes attributed to Israel, The New York Times reported on Friday.
The report quoted three Iranian sources, along with a US official, who confirmed that drones had struck the site, but declined to say who was behind the attack. It says the drones exploded in a building used to study the development of drones in Iran.
The blast killed a young engineer at the site and injured another.
The report notes that the strike follows a pattern of previous attacks attributed to Israel, including previous strikes against Iran’s drone program.
Iranian sources told the Times that the drone attack was carried out from inside Iran, not far from the Parchin military base – which the Islamic Republic uses to develop missile, nuclear and unmanned technologies – noting that quadcopter drones have a short range and Parchin is far from Iran’s borders.
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While Iranian officials initially used the word “incident” to describe the blast, the defense ministry later called it an “incident” and called the victim a “martyr,” suggesting Tehran is convinced it is an attack by a foreign organization. .
On Thursday, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Hossein Salami said the killing “will be answered to … Our enemies must wait”, without specifying who they were.
This will not be the first time a drone attack has been carried out from Iran’s borders by operatives allegedly recruited by Israel.
Iranian drone Shahed-136 was launched during a military exercise in Iran, December 2021 (Screenshot / Twitter)
Israel did not comment on Wednesday’s incident, but cited others that occurred recently in Iran and Lebanon, where Jerusalem sought to focus on the production and transfer of drone technology from Tehran to a proxy in the Middle East.
A reported Israeli UAV attack last February caused heavy damage to the Iranian drone fleet near the city of Kermanshah, prompting Iran to fire missiles at a site in Iraq that it claims is an Israeli intelligence base.
Last June, an Israeli drone allegedly hit a facility in the city of Karaj, which is used to assemble uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz and Fordou. The site is called Iran Centrifuge Technology Company or TESA.
A senior Israeli military official told the New York Times that the country had invested significant resources in detecting and destroying such weapons, which posed a particular threat, given that they could avoid ISIS anti-missile systems such as the Iron Dome.
Iranian drones have been used in attacks on Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Yemen and even a US base in Syria, intelligence officials told the Times.
Wednesday’s strike came days after gunmen killed an officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in central Tehran.
Israel has told U.S. officials it was behind the killing and killed Colonel Hassan Sayyad Hodai in an attempt to warn Tehran against the ongoing operation of an alleged secret unit he helped lead, an intelligence official told the Times.
Mourners gather around the coffin of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Colonel Sayyad Hodai during a funeral procession in Imam Hussein Square in the capital Tehran, May 24, 2022 (Atta Kenare / AFP)
Parchin, located south of Tehran, is linked to Iran’s missile and nuclear research. This has been the site of a number of mysterious explosions in the past, some of which have been suggested by Iran’s enemies.
The complex is said to have hosted previous tests of conventional explosives that could be used to detonate a nuclear warhead, something Iran has repeatedly denied.
The site came under renewed scrutiny by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2015, when Tehran reached a landmark agreement with major powers to agree to limit its nuclear activities under UN supervision in exchange for lifting international sanctions.
Iran had previously denied the IAEA access to Parchin, insisting it was a non-nuclear military site, but the agency’s then-chief, the late Yukiya Amano, visited the site.
Iran’s nuclear program has been the subject of a campaign of sabotage, cyberattacks and assassinations of key scientists blamed on Israel.
Other explosions and fires occurred in Parchin in 2014 and 2007.
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