Amid heightened regional and international tensions surrounding the Islamic Republic, authorities reported early Sunday that drones carrying bombs targeted an Iranian defense factory in the central city of Isfahan throughout the previous night.
The strike occurred at the same time that a refinery fire broke out in the country’s northwest, and a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck nearby, killing three people.
The Iranian Defense Ministry provided no information on who it suspected was responsible for the attack.
However, as its nuclear agreement with powerful nations failed, Tehran was allegedly the target of Israeli drone attacks while engaged in a covert conflict with its Mideast foe.
In the meantime, tensions with neighboring Azerbaijan are still high after a shooter assaulted its embassy in Tehran, killing its security chief and injuring two others.
Information on the attack in Isfahan, which took place at 11:30 p.m. On Saturday, there were few. According to a Defense Ministry statement, two of the three drones successfully shot down at the facility were launched.
According to the ministry, a third allegedly got it through to impact the building, “minorly damaging” its roof while leaving no one injured.
One of the many routes for motorists to travel to the holy city of Qom and Tehran, the capital of Iran, was the busy Imam Khomeini Expressway, which heads northwest of Isfahan.
Press TV, the English-language branch of Iranian state television, aired a mobile phone video that appeared to capture the moment the drone struck the expressway.
The anti-aircraft fire attracted a small group of spectators who gathered to watch as an explosion and sparks hit a shadowy structure.
This strike footage and subsequent strike footage examined by The Associated Press corresponded to a location on Minoo Street in northwest Isfahan, next to a shopping area with a carpet and an electronics store.
Commercial buildings and residential communities increasingly surround Iranian defense and nuclear complexes as the country’s cities become ever more prominent.
Some facilities remain highly secretive about what they manufacture, displaying little more than a sign with the Defense Ministry or the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard emblem.
The Defense Ministry did not specify what was produced at the site; it merely referred to it as a “workshop.”
A sizable air base constructed for its fleet of American-made F-14s is located in Isfahan, 350 kilometers (215 miles) south of Tehran.
The incident comes after Iran’s Intelligence Ministry announced in July that a plot to strike essential targets near Isfahan had been foiled.
In a segment that aired on Iranian state television in October, accused Komala members who are exiled from Iran and now reside in Iraq purportedly confessed to having intended to attack an Isfahan military aerospace complex after receiving training from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
Activists claim that during the past ten years, Iranian state TV has broadcast hundreds of forced confessions.
Officials from Israel chose not to comment on the assault.
Separately, official television in Iran reported that an oil refinery in an industrial area close to Tabriz in the northwest caught fire.
The cause was not yet known, it stated.
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