Satellite images show damage from an Israeli attack on two secret Iranian military bases

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An Israeli strike on Iran damaged facilities at a secret military base southeast of the Iranian capital that experts have linked in the past to Tehran’s former nuclear weapons program and at another base linked to it with the ballistic missile program. satellite photos analyzed Sunday by The Associated Press Show.

Some of the damaged buildings were at Iran’s Parchin military base, where the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects Iran has in the past conducted tests with explosives that could trigger a nuclear weapon. Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, although the IAEA, Western intelligence agencies and others say Tehran had an active weapons program until 2003.

The other damage was seen at the nearby Khojir military base, which analysts say hides an underground tunnel system and missile production sites.

The Iranian military has not acknowledged damage at Khojir or Parchin from the Israeli attack early Saturday, although it said the attack killed four Iranian soldiers working in the country’s air defense systems.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the Israeli military.

However, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told an audience on Sunday that the Israeli attack “should not be exaggerated or downplayed,” while he stopped short of calling for an immediate retaliatory strike. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said separately on Sunday that the Israeli strikes have “severely damaged” Iran and that the barrage “achieved all its objectives.”

It remains unclear how many locations in total were targeted by the Israeli attack. No images of the damage have been released by the Iranian military so far.

Iranian officials have identified the affected areas as being in the provinces of Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran. Burned fields were seen on satellite images from Planet Labs PBC around Iran’s Tange Bijar natural gas production site in Ilam province on Saturday, although it was not immediately clear if this was related to the attack. Ilam province is located on the Iran-Iraq border in western Iran.

The most striking damage was seen in the images from Planet Labs of Parchin, about 40 kilometers southeast of central Tehran, near the Mamalu Dam. There, one structure appeared to be completely destroyed, while others appeared damaged in the attack.

In Khojir, about 20 kilometers from central Tehran, satellite images showed damage to at least two structures.

Analysts including Decker Eveleth of the Virginia-based think tank CNA, Joe Truzman of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former United Nations weapons inspector David Albright, as well as other open source experts, first identified the damage to the bases. The locations of the two bases match videos obtained by the AP showing Iranian air defense systems firing in the area early Saturday.

In Parchin, Albright’s Institute for Science and International Security identified the destroyed mountainside building as “Taleghan 2.” It said an archive of Iranian nuclear data previously seized by Israel identified the building as home to “a smaller, elongated high explosive chamber and a flash X-ray system to investigate small-scale high explosive tests.”

“Such tests may include explosives that compress a natural uranium core, simulating the detonation of a nuclear explosive,” says a 2018 report from the institute.

In a message posted early Sunday on the social platform what the hasty and covert renovation efforts following the IAEA’s request for access to Parchin in 2011.”

It is unclear what equipment may have been in the “Taleghan 2” building early Saturday. There were no Israeli attacks on Iran’s oil industry, nor on its nuclear enrichment sites or on the Bushehr nuclear power plant during the attack.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the IAEA, confirmed this on X, saying: “Iran’s nuclear facilities have not been affected.”

“Inspectors are safe and can continue their vital work,” he added. “I urge caution and restraint in actions that could endanger the safety and security of nuclear and other radioactive materials.”

Other buildings destroyed in Khojir and Parchin likely included a warehouse and other buildings where Iran used industrial mixers to create the solid fuel needed for its vast arsenal of ballistic missiles, Eveleth said.

In a statement issued immediately after the attack on Saturday, the Israeli military said it was targeting “missile production facilities used to produce the missiles that Iran has fired at the State of Israel over the past year.”

Destroying such sites could seriously disrupt Iran’s ability to produce new ballistic missiles to replenish its arsenal after the two attacks on Israel. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which oversees the country’s ballistic missile program, has remained silent since Saturday’s attack.

Iran’s total arsenal of ballistic missiles, which also includes shorter-range missiles that cannot reach Israel, was estimated by General Kenneth McKenzie, then commander of the US Army Central Command, in testimony before the US Senate in 2022 at “more than 3,000 ”. Since then, Iran has fired hundreds of missiles in a series of attacks.

No videos or photos were posted on social media of missile parts or damage in civilian neighborhoods after the recent attack — indicating that the Israeli strikes were far more accurate than Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on Israel in April and October. Israel relied on rockets fired from aircraft during its attack.

However, one factory appeared to be affected in Shamsabad Industrial City, just south of Tehran, near Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country’s main gateway to the outside world. Online videos of the damaged building matched an address for a company known as TIECO, which advertises itself as building advanced machinery used in Iran’s oil and gas industry.

Officials at TIECO asked the AP to write the company a letter before responding to questions. The company did not immediately respond to a letter it received.

___

Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.