At least seven ships caught fire in a southern Iran shipyard, in the latest in a series of explosions and fires that analysts speculate could be part of a state-sponsored sabotage campaign targeting industrial, nuclear and military of the country.
No casualties were reported in the port of Bushehr, the city that houses Iran’s only nuclear power plant, but images released by state media showed thick plumes of smoke billowing into the air and several fire trucks at the site.
“Right now, the fires at the Tangak boat manufacturing factory, all sectors have entered: army, fire department, airport,” said an unidentified source in a shipyard video posted on social media.
Another showed dark fumes over the surrounding area:
M.Majed محمد مجيد
(@MohamadAhwaze)يحدث بمدينة بوشهر الآن. pic.twitter.com/hwh3LQtoAJ
July 15, 2020
Jahangir Dehghani, head of the province’s emergency department, said the fire broke out around 1 p.m. and was still in full swing seven hours later. The cause of the fire was unclear and would be investigated after it was extinguished, he told the state news agency Tasnim.
Wednesday’s fire is one of a series of incidents in Iran in recent months, including at sensitive sites that have raised suspicions that the country is being subjected to a covert military campaign by the United States or Israel.
In the past three weeks alone, there has been an explosion at a centrifuge assembly facility at the Natanz nuclear site, another at a suspected missile production facility in eastern Tehran, reports of explosions in two cities, including one hosting garrisons. military, a fire in a petrochemical facility, a deadly fire in a medical laboratory in the capital and several more fires, including in a petrochemical facility on Sunday.
The Natanz explosion in particular appeared to be a hostile act, aimed at a facility believed to be producing advanced centrifuges capable of more rapidly enriching uranium to weapon grade levels. Iranian officials initially described the site as an “industrial shed”, but later admitted that the incident had caused significant damage and delayed the development of its centrifuge for the “medium term”.
Israeli and American officials have declined to comment in detail, but some have offered cryptic denials that have fueled rumors of their involvement in at least some of the incidents. Several, such as a gas explosion in a residential building in Tehran four days ago, are believed to be likely the result of poor infrastructure, maintenance or training.
Even if the majority were accidents, analysts said it was clear that Iran’s adversaries were trying to organize something more explicit and public than Israeli and American efforts to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program a decade ago, which involved cyber attacks and assassinations that They attracted less immediate publicity.
“It tells us that we have entered a new era in this type of shadow war,” said Dina Esfandiary, a member of the Century Foundation expert group. “One where Israelis and Americans do not care about the victims or the consequences of these increasingly public and visible attacks, and are under international scrutiny for carrying them out.”
It was notable that Iran had resisted directly blaming Israel or the United States, said Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute and an expert on the Iranian nuclear program. “If you point your finger, it means there has to be an answer,” she said.
She said it was understood that Iranian leaders awaited Donald Trump’s presidency in the hope that he would be defeated in the November presidential election, and then replaced by a Democratic administration more susceptible to a diplomatic approach.
As a result, even provocative acts such as the assassination of Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Suleimani, one of the country’s most popular officials, had elicited a carefully calibrated response to prevent escalation, he said. The sabotage incident could be an effort to incite Tehran to a confrontation before the political atmosphere changed.
“Iran has a strategy of waiting, but there are those who are trying to stop Iran’s nuclear program [non-diplomatic] it means and perhaps trigger an Iran response that could create more chaos before the US election, which I think Iran is taking into account, “Bassiri said.
Amos Yadlin, Israel’s former chief of military intelligence, told the Guardian that potential suspects included the United States, as part of its maximum-pressure campaign to force Iran to renegotiate the nuclear deal, as well as Israel, Iranian internal dissidents. or Saudi Arabia, which blames the Islamic Republic for a drone attack on its oil processing facilities last October.
Whoever is to blame agreed that the timing of the incidents was likely related to the U.S. presidential polls. “I think it all has to do with the fact that there are elections in the United States and these elections may change the policy of the United States and some people may think that this is the last time they have reacted against Iran,” Yadlin said.
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