Sunday, January 29, 2023

Israel Reportedly Carries Out Drone Strikes On Iranian Factory On Eve Of Blinken’s Middle East Tour

Siladitya Ray
Forbes Staff


Jan 29, 2023

An Iranian defense factory was targeted by Israeli drone strikes late Saturday night, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing U.S. officials, an attack that comes amid growing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and its continued supply of weapons to Russia.


File photo of Iran's Uranium Conversion Facility, just outside the city of Isfahan.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

KEY FACTS


Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the Wall Street Journal reported that the target was a munitions factory in the city of Isfahan and the attack was carried out by small Israeli quadcopters (Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for the strikes).

It is unclear if the munitions factory itself was the target of the attack, as it is located next to an Iran Space Research Center site, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. for its alleged work on ballistic missiles, the report added.

In a statement on Sunday, the Iranian Defense Ministry said a factory was targeted by three drones but claimed that the attack was “unsuccessful.”

Two of the three drones “were caught in traps” and a third one was shot down by air defense inside the factory, resulting in only “minor damage” on the facility’s roof and no casualties, the ministry added.

Israeli media outlets and journalists citing official sources within the country, however, reported that the strikes successfully targeted four different areas of a building linked to Iran’s missile program.

The strikes come on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Middle East tour, which includes visits to Egypt, Israel and the occupied West Bank territory.

Dismissing the attack as a “cowardly” attempt to destabilize the country, Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said: “Such actions will not impact our experts' determination to progress in our peaceful nuclear work.”

KEY BACKGROUND

The city of Isfahan is located less than 100 miles from Natanz, which is home to a major Iranian nuclear facility. The Biden Administration’s efforts to resurrect a deal to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon—after the previous agreement was scrapped by the Trump Administration—have failed to make any progress. Israel, however, has warned that it will use military force to halt Iran’s nuclear or ballistic missile programs, and the Israeli Defense Forces has been linked to attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and scientists in the past. The strike on Iran is the first one carried out by Israel by the country’s new far-right ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Tehran has also drawn scorn from Kyiv and its Western allies for supplying weapons including kamikaze drones to the Russian military in support of its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

SECTION TITLE

Israel Strikes Iran Amid New International Push to Contain Tehran (Wall Street Journal)


Israel strikes Iranian munitions facility with targeted drones


Israel strikes Iranian munitions facility with targeted drones

John Bowden
Sun, January 29, 2023

Iranian officials said that unmanned aerial vehicles struck a munitions facility in the central Iranian city of Isfahan overnight, a result of what US officials on Sunday said was an Israeli operation, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Tehran had not initially placed blame for the attack, and claimed that only minor damage was done to the rooftop of the facility. The Iranian defence ministry further claimed that several drones had been shot down by Iranian ground-to-air defences. It was unclear, based on multiple reports, if any drones survived the operation.

Israeli officials also did not immediately claim credit for the operation, though the Biden administration likely revealed their involvement with tacit support.

It wasn’t clear exactly what the attack’s intended goal was, but The Wall Street Journal reported that the site of the battle was directly next to a site designated for the Iran Space Research Center, which plays a role in Tehran’s ballistic missiles program.

The attack comes at a time of great uncertainty in the field of US-Iran relations. The Biden administration spent much of the president’s first two years in office attempting to revive the Obama-era nuclear accord signed by Iran, the US, and several European countries which was abandoned under the Trump administration. But White House and State Department officials, including the president himself, have recently indicated that the possibility of those talks resulting in success has all but evaporated.

Such operations therefore could become more commonplace in the months and years ahead as the US and Israel seek to hinder Iran’s various weapons and atomic development programs through nonpolitical and often violent means.

Meanwhile, cities across Iran have been rocked for months by widespread demonstrations in response to the killing of a young woman in police custody. The 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was detained for allegedly wearing a headscarf incorrectly in September; she died after reports say she was severely beaten.

Her death sparked a wave of protests against the country’s so-called “morality police” and the country’s conservative Muslim government in general; those demonstrations continue even as the Iranian government has responded with a brutal crackdown that has included arrests and sentences as severe as death for some of those caught.

The US Congress has voted in bipartisan fashion to support those protests, with conservatives finding rare common cause with the left on the issue. European legislative bodies have done the same, sparking a wave of retaliatory sanctions by Tehran; the Biden administration meanwhile, has responded with sanctions for a number of senior officials including members of the Revolutionary Guard over the crackdown.

Iran says drone attack targets defense facility in Isfahan
 

JON GAMBRELL
Sat, January 28, 2023

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Bomb-carrying drones targeted an Iranian defense factory in the central city of Isfahan overnight, authorities said early Sunday, causing some damage at the plant amid heightened regional and international tensions engulfing the Islamic Republic.

The Iranian Defense Ministry offered no information on who it suspected carried out the attack, which came as a refinery fire separately broke out in the country's northwest and a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck nearby, killing three people.

However, Tehran has been targeted in suspected Israeli drone strikes amid a shadow war with its Mideast rival as its nuclear deal with world powers collapsed. Meanwhile, tensions also remain high with neighboring Azerbaijan after a gunman attacked that country's embassy in Tehran, killing its security chief and wounding two others.

Details on the Isfahan attack, which happened around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, remained scarce. A Defense Ministry statement described three drones being launched at the facility, with two of them successfully shot down. A third apparently made it through to strike the building, causing “minor damage” to its roof and wounding no one, the ministry said.

The state-run IRNA news agency later described the drones as “quadcopters equipped with bomblets.” Quadcopters, which get their name from having four rotors, typically operate from short ranges by remote control.

Iranian state television's English-language arm, Press TV, aired mobile phone video apparently showing the moment that drone struck along the busy Imam Khomeini Expressway that heads northwest out of Isfahan, one of several ways for drivers to go to the holy city of Qom and Tehran, Iran's capital. A small crowd stood gathered, drawn by anti-aircraft fire, watching as an explosion and sparks struck a dark building.

“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.




 Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian speaks in a joint press briefing with his Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023. 
(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

That footage of the strike, as well as footage of the aftermath analyzed by The Associated Press, corresponded to a site on Minoo Street in northwestern Isfahan that's near a shopping center that includes a carpet and an electronics store.

Iranian defense and nuclear sites increasingly find themselves surrounded by commercial properties and residential neighborhoods as the country's cities sprawl ever outward. Some locations as well remain incredibly opaque about what they produce, with only a sign bearing a Defense Ministry or paramilitary Revolutionary Guard logo.

The Defense Ministry only called the site 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.

Meeting later alongside his Qatari counterpart, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian criticized the “cowardly attack” when asked if it would affect the country's nuclear program.

"Such moves can’t impact our nuclear scientists will and intentions to achieve peaceful nuclear energy,” Amirabdollahian said.

Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said he passed a message from the Americans to Iran that related to its nuclear program, without offering specifics.

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. However, a U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing the sensitivity of the situation given regional tensions, told the AP on Sunday night that “no U.S. military forces have conducted strikes or operations inside 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 targeted in missile and drone attacks last year 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.”

___

Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss contributed to this report.

No comments:

Post a Comment