A drone attack targeted a military compound in Iran during the night from Saturday to Sunday, which he condemned as “a cowardly act”, in a context of tensions linked to the nuclear file and the war in Ukraine.
Authorities remained very low-key on Sunday after claiming overnight that they had repelled this attack, which has similarities to clandestine operations that have targeted nuclear facilities in recent years.
“A cowardly act was carried out today to make Iran less safe,” condemned Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. But “such actions cannot affect the will of our experts for the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” he added to the press.
“Minor Damage”
The attack was carried out this Saturday around 11:30 p.m. (8:00 p.m. GMT), without causing fatalities and causing “minor damage to the roof” of a building in a military complex in Isfahan, a large city in the center of Iran. the Defense Ministry said overnight.
In total, three quadcopters, drones equipped with four rotors, targeted “an ammunition manufacturing plant” located in the north of the city, the Irna agency later specified.
One of these drones, less damaged than the others, “was handed over to the security forces stationed in the complex,” according to the agency.
A video widely shared on social media, the authenticity of which could not be verified by AFP, shows a large explosion at the scene and images of emergency vehicles then heading towards the area.
Tehran accuses Israel
The announcement of this attack comes in a tense context against the backdrop of a protest movement in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini in September, persistent differences on the nuclear issue and accusations by some countries of supplies by Tehran of drones to the Russian army for the war in Ukraine.
Speaking to the Mehr news agency, MP Mohammad-Hassan Assafari accused the “enemies” of the Islamic Republic of trying to “disrupt the defensive capabilities” of the country.
Iran has several known nuclear research sites in the Isfahan region, including a uranium conversion plant.
In recent years, the Iranian authorities have implicated Israel in various secret actions carried out on its soil in the form of campaigns of cyberattacks, sabotage or targeted assassinations of scientists. Israel has never recognized such acts.
The attacks targeted in particular the Natanz nuclear research sites in 2020 and 2021 and the Karaj one the same year. In 2020, an attack, carried out according to Tehran with a satellite-controlled machine gun, killed a prominent nuclear physicist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Nuclear talks stalled
The negotiations to reactivate the international Iranian nuclear agreement, known by its acronym in English JCPOA and concluded in 2015 between Iran on the one hand, the European Union and six great powers on the other, have stalled after the unilateral exit of the United States in 2018.
This agreement was intended to prevent Tehran from acquiring atomic weapons, a goal that Iran has always denied pursuing.
However, in April 2022, Tehran announced that it had begun producing 60% enriched uranium at the Natanz site, approaching the 90% needed to make an atomic bomb.
Without establishing a link to the attack, a fire broke out at a motor oil production plant in the northwest of the country on Saturday night, the Irna news agency reported. This fire, spectacular according to the images disseminated by the media, occurred in an important industrial center.
Source: BFM TV
