DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Bomb-carrying drones focused an Iranian defense manufacturing facility in the central metropolis of Isfahan in a single day, authorities mentioned early Sunday, inflicting some injury on the plant amid heightened regional and worldwide tensions engulfing the Islamic Republic.
The Iranian Defense Ministry provided no info on who it suspected carried out the attack, which got here as a refinery hearth individually broke out in the nation’s northwest and a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck close by, killing three folks.
However, Tehran has been focused in suspected Israeli drone strikes amid a shadow struggle with its Mideast rival as its nuclear cope with world powers collapsed. Meanwhile, tensions additionally stay excessive with neighboring Azerbaijan after a gunman attacked that nation’s embassy in Tehran, killing its safety chief and wounding two others.
Details on the Isfahan attack, which occurred round 11:30 p.m. Saturday, remained scarce. A Defense Ministry assertion described three drones being launched on the facility, with two of them efficiently shot down. A 3rd apparently made it by means of to strike the constructing, inflicting “minor damage” to its roof and wounding nobody, the ministry mentioned.
Iranian state tv’s English-language arm, Press TV, aired cell phone video apparently exhibiting the second that drone struck alongside the busy Imam Khomeini Expressway that heads northwest out of Isfahan, certainly one of a number of methods for drivers to go to the holy metropolis of Qom and Tehran, Iran’s capital. A small crowd stood gathered, drawn by anti-aircraft hearth, watching as an explosion and sparks struck a darkish constructing.
“Oh my God! That was a drone, wasn’t it?” the man filming shouts. “Yeah, it was a drone.”
Those there fled after the strike.
That footage of the strike, in addition to footage of the aftermath analyzed by The Associated Press, corresponded to a website on Minoo Street in northwestern Isfahan that is close to a shopping mall that features a carpet and an electronics retailer.
Iranian defense and nuclear websites more and more discover themselves surrounded by industrial properties and residential neighborhoods because the nation’s cities sprawl ever outward. Some places as properly stay extremely opaque about what they produce, with solely an indication bearing a Defense Ministry or paramilitary Revolutionary Guard emblem.
The Defense Ministry solely known as the positioning a “workshop,” without elaborating on what it made. Isfahan, some 350 kilometers (215 miles) south of Tehran, is home to both a large air base built for its fleet of American-made F-14 fighter jets and its Nuclear Fuel Research and Production Center.
The attack comes after Iran’s Intelligence Ministry in July claimed to have broken up a plot to target sensitive sites around Isfahan. A segment aired on Iranian state TV in October included purported confessions by alleged members of Komala, a Kurdish opposition party that is exiled from Iran and now lives in Iraq, that they planned to target a military aerospace facility in Isfahan after being trained by Israel’s Mossad intelligence service.
Activists say Iranian state TV has aired hundreds of coerced confessions over the last decade. Israeli officials declined to comment on the attack.
Separately, Iran’s state TV said a fire broke out at an oil refinery in an industrial zone near the northwestern city of Tabriz. It said the cause was not yet known, as it showed footage of firefighters trying to extinguish the blaze. Tabriz is some 520 kilometers (325 miles) northwest of Tehran.
State TV also said the magnitude 5.9 earthquake killed three people and injured 816 others in rural areas in West Azerbaijan province, damaging buildings in many villages.
Iran’s theocratic government faces challenges both at home and abroad as its nuclear program rapidly enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels since the collapse of its atomic accord with world powers.
Nationwide protests have shaken the country since the September death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman detained by the country’s morality police. Its rial currency has plummeted to new lows against the U.S. dollar. Meanwhile, Iran continues to arm Russia with the bomb-carrying drone that Moscow uses in attacks in Ukraine on power plants and civilian targets.
Israel is suspected of launching a series of attacks on Iran, including an April 2021 assault on its underground Natanz nuclear facility that damaged its centrifuges. In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for a sophisticated attack that killed its top military nuclear scientist.
Israeli officials rarely acknowledge operations carried out by the country’s secret military units or its Mossad intelligence agency. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently re-entered the premiership, long has considered Iran to be the biggest threat his nation faces. The U.S. and Israel also just held their largest-ever military exercise amid the tensions with Iran.
Meanwhile, tensions remain high between Azerbaijan and Iran as Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Iran also wants to maintain its 44-kilometer (27-mile) border with landlocked Armenia — something that could be threatened if Azerbaijan seizes new territory through warfare.
Iran in October launched a military exercise near the Azerbaijan border. Azerbaijan also maintains close ties to Israel, which has infuriated Iranian hard-liners, and has purchased Israeli-made drones for its military.
Anwar Gargash, a senior Emirati diplomat, warned online that the Isfahan attack represented one more event in the “dangerous escalation the region is witnessing.” The United Arab Emirates was focused in missile and drone assaults final 12 months claimed by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
It “is not in the interest of the region and its future,” Gargash wrote on Twitter. “Although the problems of the region are complex, there is no alternative to dialogue.”
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Associated Press author Joseph Krauss contributed to this report.