Israel Strikes Iran's Missile Facilities and Old Nuclear Site
Recent satellite imagery indicates that Israel has targeted an old nuclear weapons test site and missile facilities in Iran. According to American researchers, the Israeli airstrikes on Saturday affected a site associated with Iran's defunct nuclear weapons program and solid-fuel mixing facilities for missiles.
Former UN weapons inspector David Albright and CNA research analyst Decker Eveleth separately examined commercial satellite images. Their assessments revealed that Israel struck Parchin, a significant military complex near Tehran, and Khojir, a major missile production site.
In July, Khojir was reported to have undergone significant expansion. Eveleth noted that the Israeli strikes could severely disrupt Iran's capability to mass-produce missiles. The Israeli military stated that early on Saturday, Israeli jets hit missile factories and other locations in waves across western Iran and near Tehran, in response to Iran firing over 200 missiles at Israel on October 1.
The Iranian military reported that Israeli warplanes used "very light warheads" to target border radar systems around Ilam, Khuzestan, and Tehran. Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security research group, identified the building hit in Parchin as Taleghan 2, which was involved in testing activities during Iran's former nuclear weapon development program known as the Amad Plan.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and U.S. intelligence have stated that Iran ended this program in 2003, a claim Iran has denied. Albright had facilitated access to documents related to the program obtained by the Mossad intelligence agency from Tehran in 2018 for a book. He suggested that Iran may have extracted critical materials from Taleghan 2 before the airstrike, but the site itself still holds potential value for future nuclear weapons-related activities.
Albright's analysis of satellite images from Parchin indicated that three buildings approximately 320 meters away from Taleghan 2 were damaged, two of which were sites where solid fuel for ballistic missiles was mixed. Eveleth's examination of Planet Labs imagery revealed that three solid fuel mixing buildings and a storage facility in Parchin, as well as two buildings in Khojir, were destroyed.
These buildings were surrounded by high earthen mounds designed to contain explosions, specific to missile production facilities. Eveleth noted that the targeted industrial mixers are difficult to produce and subject to export controls, implying that Iran would struggle to replace them.
The precision of these attacks could significantly hinder Iran's ability to mass-produce missiles and complicate any future missile strikes against Israel. Axios reported that Israel destroyed 12 "planetary mixers" used for solid fuel production for long-range ballistic missiles, which could severely affect Iran's missile stockpiling capabilities.
Iran possesses the largest missile arsenal in the Middle East and has been accused by U.S. officials of supplying missiles to the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hezbollah militia in Lebanon for use against Russia in Ukraine. Both Tehran and Moscow have denied these allegations.
Earlier this year, Planet Labs imagery analyzed by Eveleth and Jeffrey Lewis from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey revealed substantial expansions believed to be for increasing missile production at Khojir and the Modarres military complex near Tehran. This finding was confirmed by three senior Iranian officials.