As per satellite photo released on Sunday, an Israeli attack on Iran damaged facilities at a secretive military base southeast of the Iranian capital that experts in the past have linked to Tehran’s onetime nuclear weapons programme and at another base tied to its ballistic missile programme.
Some of the buildings damaged sat in Iran’s Parchin military base, where the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects Iran in the past conducted tests of high explosives that could trigger a nuclear weapon.
Iran has long insisted its nuclear programme is peaceful, though the IAEA, Western intelligence agencies and others say Tehran had an active weapons programme up until 2003.
The other damage could be seen at the nearby Khojir military base, which analysts believe hides an underground tunnel system and missile production sites.
Iran’s military has not acknowledged damage at either Khojir or Parchin from Israel’s attack early Saturday, although it has said the assault killed four Iranian soldiers working in the country’s air defence systems.
Iran announced Sunday a civilian also had been killed, but provided no details.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment. The Israeli military declined to comment.
However, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday said “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” while stopping short of calling for an immediate retaliatory strike.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu separately said Sunday that Israel’s strikes “severely harmed” Iran and that the barrage “achieved all its goals.”
The most telling damage could be seen in Planet Labs images of Parchin, some 40 kilometres southeast of downtown Tehran near the Mamalu Dam. There, one structure appeared to be totally destroyed while others looked damaged in the attack.
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