Iran claimed to have repelled an attack on a military compound in Isfahan in the center of the country on the night of Saturday January 28 to Sunday January 29.
“An attack that failed was carried out with drones on one of the Defense Ministry’s equipment complexes,” the latter explained, quoted by the Irna agency, adding that there were no casualties but only “minor damage to the roof” of a building .
“The attack that took place around 11:30 p.m. on Saturday. [21 heures à Paris]did not cause any disruption in the operation of the complex,” the ministry said, adding that one of the drones was destroyed by the site’s anti-aircraft defense system, while the other two exploded.
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No sacrifice
A video widely circulated on social media, whose authenticity the Agence France-Presse could not verify, shows a loud explosion at the site and images of emergency vehicles then moving towards the area.
Deputy governor of Isfahan province Mohammad Reza Jan-Nesari also said on TV that the attack “did not claim any casualties”, adding that an investigation was launched to define the causes.
The authorities did not provide any information on the activities of the attacked site in the north of the large city of Isfahan.
The announcement of this attack comes in a tense context amid a protest movement in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini in September, allegations by certain countries that Tehran supplied drones to the Russian army for the war in Ukraine, and persistent disagreements over the nuclear issue .
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nuclear program
Iran has several known nuclear research sites in this region, including a uranium conversion facility. 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 2015 nuclear deal between Iran, the European Union and six major powers have stalled after the United States left in 2018. The deal aimed to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, a goal Iran has always denied.
The 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.
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