DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran blamed Israel on Thursday for a drone attack on a military workshop…
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran blamed Israel on Thursday for a drone attack on a military workshop in its central city of Isfahan over the weekend, warning that it “reserves its legitimate and inherent right” to retaliate.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations, in a letter posted on its website, attributed the Saturday night attack to Israel.
“Early investigations suggest that the Israeli regime was responsible for this attempted act of aggression,” reads the letter signed by Iranian Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani. The letter did not elaborate on what evidence supported Iran’s suspicion.
Israeli officials declined to comment. Yet Israel has carried out a series of attacks on Iran’s nuclear program and elsewhere since the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as part of a year-long shadow war between Middle East rivals. East.
Details about the Isfahan attack, which occurred around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, remain scant days after the assault. A Defense Ministry statement described the launch of three drones at the facility, two of which were successfully shot down. A third party apparently managed to hit the building, causing “minor damage” to its roof and injuring no one, the ministry said.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA later described the drones as “bomblet-equipped quadcopters.” Quadcopters, named for having four rotors, often operate from short distances by remote control. Iranian state television later broadcast footage of the debris from the drones, which resembled commercially available quadcopters.
It is unclear what produced the workshop. Iravani referred to it only as an “Iranian Defense Ministry workshop complex” in his letter.
Israel was initially suspected of being behind the attack. Iran’s intelligence ministry claimed in July it had foiled a plot to attack sensitive sites around Isfahan.
A segment broadcast on Iranian state television in October included alleged confessions by alleged members of Komala, a Kurdish opposition party that is in exile from Iran and now lives in Iraq, who planned to attack a military aerospace facility in Isfahan after being trained by Israel’s Mossad. Intelligence service. However, activists say Iran has broadcast hundreds of coerced confessions on state television over the past decade.
Iravani’s letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council warned that Tehran could retaliate against the attack.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its legitimate and inherent right… to defend its national security and respond resolutely to any threat or unlawful action by the Israeli regime, where and when it deems it necessary,” the letter said.
Israeli officials rarely acknowledge operations carried out by the country’s secret military units or its Mossad intelligence agency. Yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently resumed his prime ministerial role, has long considered Iran the biggest threat the nation faces from him.
Iravani’s letter was separately complaining about Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who tweeted after the drone strike: “Explosive night in Iran…Ukraine had warned you.” Iran has supplied Russia with bomb-carrying drones that Moscow has used to attack power plants and civilian sites in Ukraine in its war against the country.
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