Three quadricopters, drones with four rotors, targeted “an ammunition manufacturing plant” located in the north of the city. Tehran denounced a “cowardly act”.
A drone attack targeted a military site in Iran overnight from Saturday to Sunday, which condemned “a cowardly act”, in a context of tensions linked to the nuclear file and the war in Ukraine.
The authorities remained very discreet 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 secure,” condemned Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. But “such actions cannot affect the will of our experts for the development of peaceful nuclear energy”, he added to the press.
“Minor Damage”
The attack was carried out this Saturday around 11:30 p.m. (8 p.m. GMT), without causing any casualties and causing “minor damage to the roof” of a building of a military complex in Isfahan, a large city in the center of the Iran, the Defense Ministry said overnight.
In total, three quadricopters, drones equipped with four rotors, targeted “an ammunition manufacturing plant” located in the north of the city, then specified the Irna agency.
One of these drones, less damaged than the others, “was handed over to the security forces stationed at the complex”, according to the agency.
A video widely circulated on social networks, the authenticity of which AFP could not verify, shows a large explosion at the site 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.
In a statement to the Mehr news agency, parliamentarian Mohammad-Hassan Assafari accused the “enemies” of the Islamic Republic of seeking 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 several secret actions carried out on its soil in the form of campaigns of cyberattacks, sabotage or targeted assassinations of scientists. Israel has never acknowledged such acts.
Attacks notably targeted the nuclear research sites of Natanz in 2020 and 2021 and that of Karaj the same year. In 2020, an attack, perpetrated according to Tehran using a satellite-controlled machine gun, killed a leading nuclear physicist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Nuclear talks stalled
Negotiations to revive the international Iranian nuclear agreement, known by its English acronym JCPOA and concluded in 2015 between Iran on the one hand, the European Union and six major powers on the other, have stalled after the unilateral exit of the United States in 2018.
This agreement was aimed at preventing Tehran from acquiring atomic weapons, an objective that Iran has always denied pursuing.
In April 2022, however, Tehran announced that it had started producing 60% enriched uranium at the Natanz site, approaching the 90% needed to make an atomic bomb.
Without a link being made with the attack, a fire broke out on Saturday evening in a motor oil production plant in the northwest of the country, the Irna agency reported. This fire, spectacular according to the images broadcast by the media, occurred in an important industrial center.
