Satellite images show damage from Israeli attacks on secret Iranian military bases

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An Israeli attack 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 the ballistic missile program, satellite photos released Sunday show The Associated Press analyzed.

Some of the damaged buildings remained standing Iran's Parchin military basewhere the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects Iran has in the past conducted tests of high explosives that could trigger a nuclear weapon. Iran has long insisted that its nuclear program is peaceful, even though the IAEA, Western intelligence agencies and others say Tehran had an active weapons program until 2003.

The other damage could be seen nearby Khojir military basewhich, according to analysts, hides an underground tunnel system and missile production facilities.

The Iranian military did not acknowledge any damage at either 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.

The Iranian mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the Israeli military.

However, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told an audience on Sunday that the Israeli attack “should neither be exaggerated nor downplayed,” without calling for an immediate retaliation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said separately on Sunday that the Israeli strikes had “inflicted serious damage” on Iran and that the barrage had “achieved all of its objectives.”

The damage was spread across three Iranian provinces

It remains unclear how many locations in total were affected by the Israeli attack. So far, the Iranian military has not released any images of damage.

Iranian officials have identified the affected areas in Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran provinces. Burnt fields could be seen in 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 whether this was related to the attack. Ilam Province is located on the Iran-Iraq border in western Iran.

The clearest damage was seen in Planet Labs images of Parchin, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of downtown Tehran near the Mamalu Dam. There, one structure appeared to be completely destroyed, while others appeared to be damaged by the attack.

In Khojir, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from downtown 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, among other open source experts, initially identified the damage to the bases. The locations of the two bases match Videos obtained by the AP It shows Iranian air defense systems firing nearby early Saturday.

Base associated with Iran's former nuclear weapons program

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

“Such tests may have involved compressing a core of natural uranium with high explosives, thereby simulating the release of a nuclear explosive,” the institute said in a 2018 report.

In a message posted on the social platform early Sunday, “secret renovation efforts followed the IAEA's request to gain access to Parchin in 2011.”

It is unclear what equipment, if any, would have been in the Taleghan 2 building early Saturday. There have been no Israeli attacks on Iran's oil industry, nor on its nuclear enrichment facilities its nuclear power plant in Bushehr during the attack.

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

“The inspectors are safe and can continue their important work,” he added. “I call for caution and restraint in actions that could endanger the safety of nuclear and other radioactive materials.”

Damage to facilities in Iran's ballistic missile program

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

In a statement issued immediately after Saturday's attack, the Israeli military said it had “targeted missile factories used to produce the missiles that Iran fired at the State of Israel last year.”

The destruction of such sites could significantly impact Iran's ability to produce new ballistic missiles to replenish its arsenal after the two attacks on Israel. Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guardwho monitors the country's ballistic missile programHe has been silent since Saturday's attack.

Iran's overall arsenal of ballistic missiles, which includes short-range missiles that cannot reach Israel, was put at “above” by General Kenneth McKenzie, then commander of the US military's Central Command, in testimony to the US Senate in 2022 3,000” estimated. Since then, Iran has fired hundreds of these missiles in a series of attacks.

After the latest attack, no videos or photos of rocket parts or damage to residential neighborhoods were posted on social media – suggesting that the Israeli strikes were far more precise than Iranian rocket attacks on Israel April And October. Israel relied on aircraft-fired missiles for its attack.

However, a factory in the industrial city of Shamsabad, south of Tehran, near Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country's main gateway to the outside world, appeared to have been hit. Online videos of the damaged building matched an address for a company called TIECO, which advertises itself as building advanced machinery for Iran's oil and gas industry.

TIECO officials asked the AP to write a letter to the company before answering questions. The company did not immediately respond to a letter sent to it.

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