by Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Raphael Ofek
Three incidents, including two explosions at nuclear facilities, have shaken Iran in recent days. Were they connected?
Explosion at Parchin facility in Iran, June 26 2020, image via @Doranimated Twitter feed
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,628, July 6, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Three
incidents, including two explosions at nuclear facilities, have shaken
Iran in recent days. Were they connected? Were they caused by accidents
or were they carried out by a foreign power? If the latter, were they
executed via cyberattack? And what will be their domestic and
international implications?
Early in the morning on June 26, Tehran was rocked
by a huge explosion at the Parchin military complex, 30 kilometers
southeast of the Iranian capital. Some media outlets attributed the
blast to Parchin’s role in the development of nuclear weapons, which
were reaffirmed when Iran’s secret nuclear research archive was smuggled
to Israel and exposed in 2018. The regime’s choice of Parchin as the
site at which to conduct nuclear experiments was probably due to the
fact that ammunition, explosives, and solid rocket fuel were produced
there.
As early as 2012, the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) asked the Iranian authorities to allow its inspectors to
tour Parchin following information it had received about nuclear
activity at the facility. Its request was rejected. The Iranians then
demolished the buildings where the suspect activity had allegedly taken
place and even razed the area around them.
In September 2015, after signing the JCPOA nuclear
agreement, Tehran finally allowed IAEA inspectors to tour the area and
take soil samples. Despite the regime’s thorough sanitizing of the site,
anthropogenic (human-processed) uranium particles were found that could
only have been produced during “cold test” explosions of nuclear
devices.
Since then, as far as is known, there has been no
nuclear activity at Parchin. It is therefore likely that the June 26
explosion was a detonation of explosives and/or solid rocket fuel.
According to satellite photos and eyewitness testimony, the effects of
the blast are spread over a half-mile area that is networked with many
underground tunnels.
The area in question belongs to the Khojir plant,
which produces solid fuel for Fajr rockets, cruise missiles, and Iran’s
2,000-mile Sajil ballistic missile. An Iranian Defense Ministry
spokesman minimized the significance of the incident and claimed that an
industrial gas tank had exploded without casualties.
Five days later, another blast occurred, this time
at a clinic at Sinai Athar Health Center in northern Tehran. This
explosion, which completely destroyed the clinic, killed at least 19
people, most of them women. According to the Iranian authorities, the
disaster was caused by oxygen balloon leakage.
The next day, a fire broke out at Iran’s main
uranium enrichment plant at Natanz (the site targeted by the Stuxnet
computer worm in 2011). As it did for the previous incidents, the regime
understated the extent of the damage at Natanz. The spokesman for the
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Behruz Kamalvandi, claimed a fire
had broken out in an “industrial shed that was under construction” and
said it had resulted in no casualties or environmental pollution.
American experts claim, however, that their
satellite imagery identified the damaged structure as a workshop for the
production of state-of-the-art uranium enrichment centrifuges. Contrary
to Iran’s claim that nothing occurred at the site besides a fire, the
photo of the damaged structure displayed by the Iranian Atomic Energy
Agency shows rubble and a door off its hinges, indicating that the fire
was likely accompanied by an explosion.
While the blast at the clinic was probably an
accident, the other two incidents were generally assumed by the
international media to have been committed by Israel and the US,
possibly as part of an ongoing cyberwar with Iran. There are a number of
reasons why this may well be the case: the failed Iranian cyberattack
on Israel in April, which was intended to increase the amount of
chlorine in Israel’s water infrastructure with the object of poisoning
or sickening Israeli civilians en masse (an attack to which Israel
allegedly responded via a cyberattack on the Iranian port at Bandar
Abbas); Iran’s significant progress in developing uranium enrichment
centrifuges and production of enriched uranium quantities in
contravention of the 2015 nuclear agreement; and clashes between the US
and Iran in the Persian Gulf. It has also been speculated that the
attacks are US retaliation for the failure of the Security Council to
extend the arms embargo on Iran.
Whatever the case, these incidents occurred at a
particularly inopportune time for the Tehran regime, which is struggling
to cope with an economic collapse and sharp currency devaluation due to
US sanctions; the coronavirus pandemic, which is taking a heavy toll on
the Iranian people; and Iran’s military failures versus the IDF in
Syria.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/the-mysterious-explosions-at-irans-nuclear-facilities/
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