On Sunday, the Defense Ministry announced the failure of a strike carried out “with micro-drones on one of the ministry’s complexes” in Isfahan, a large central city. It wasn’t claimed.
Iran said Sunday it repelled a nighttime drone attack on a military compound amid tensions over the nuclear issue and the war in Ukraine. Authorities remained very discreet Sunday morning after announcing they had opened an investigation into the causes of this unalleged attack. “A cowardly act was committed today to make Iran less secure,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian condemned a little later. But “such actions cannot spoil the will of our experts in the development of peaceful nuclear energy,” he added to the press.
During the night, the defense ministry announced the failure of an attack carried out “with micro-drones on one of the ministry’s complexes” in Isfahan, a large city in the center. This attack, which took place around 23:30 (20:00 GMT) on Saturday, caused no casualties but only “minor damage to the roof” of a building and “did not cause any disruption to the operations of the complex,” the ministry said. A total of three quadrocopters, drones equipped with four rotors, were aimed at “an ammunition factory” in the north of the city, as the Irna agency noted. One of those drones, less damaged than the others, “was handed over to security forces stationed at the complex,” according to the agency.
The announcement of this attack comes in a tense context amid a protest movement in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini in September, ongoing differences over the nuclear issue and allegations by some countries of using drones to supply Tehran to the Russian army following the war in Ukraine. The Iranian ministry said one of the drones was destroyed by the target’s anti-aircraft system, while the other two exploded.
A video widely circulated on social media, the authenticity of which AFP has been unable to verify, shows a large explosion at the site and images of emergency vehicles then moving toward the area.
Fire in a factory
In statements to the Mehr agency, MP Mohammad-Hassan Assafari accused the Islamic Republic’s “opponents and enemies” of wanting to “disrupt the country’s defences” with this attack.
Iran has several well-known nuclear research sites in the Isfahan region, including a uranium conversion plant. In April 2022, Tehran announced that it had started production of 60% enriched uranium at the Natanz site, approaching the 90% needed to make a nuclear bomb. Negotiations to revive the international Iran nuclear deal, known by its English acronym JCPOA, signed in 2015 between Iran on the one hand, the European Union and six major powers on the other, have stalled following the unilateral withdrawal of the United States in 2018.
This deal aimed to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, a goal that the‘Iran has consistently refused to prosecute. Iran’s nuclear program has been the target of multiple campaigns of cyberattacks, sabotage and targeted killings of scientists.
Iran has therefore accused Israel of conducting several covert actions on its soil, including an attack that Tehran says was perpetrated with a satellite-guided machine gun and killed a leading nuclear physicist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in November 2020.
Without establishing a connection with the attack, a fire broke out in a motor oil production plant in the north-west of the country on Saturday evening, the agency Irna reported. This fire, spectacular according to the images circulated by the media, occurred in an important industrial center linked to the Ministry of Industry. The fire was brought under control by firefighters and authorities are investigating its causes, Irna said.
Updated at 5 p.m with the statements of the foreign minister and details about the drones.