Satellite images showed that Israeli airstrikes hit industrial facilities that were part of Iran’s nuclear program and others where solid fuel mixtures for ballistic missiles were made, according to two US researchers.
This is the conclusion reached by David Albright, a former UN military inspector who now heads the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), and Decker Eveleth, a researcher who works with CNA, a think tank in Washington.
As they told Reuters news agency, Israel hit Parchin, a huge complex of military installations near the Iranian capital. Eveleth said Israeli armed forces also hit the Hojir site on the outskirts of Tehran, where a rocket manufacturing factory is located.
Reuters reported in July that work was underway at Hojir to significantly expand the facilities.
Eveleth emphasized that Israeli strikes are likely to “severely limit Iran’s ability to mass-produce missiles.”
The Israeli Armed Forces (IDF) said three waves of airstrikes hit missile factories and other sites near Tehran and in western Iran in retaliation for a barrage of more than 200 rockets received by Israel on October 1. .
Iran reported that Israeli planes hit radar systems in the provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan, and on the outskirts of Tehran.
Decker Eveleth said a Planet Labs satellite image shows Israelis destroyed two buildings in Hojir where solid fuel mixes for ballistic missiles were being made. Other Planet Labs images of the Parchin complex show that three buildings serving the same purpose were destroyed, as well as a storage area, the American researcher added.
David Albright said he reviewed low-resolution images of Partchin and concluded that the Israeli strike destroyed three buildings, including two facilities where solid fuel mixes for ballistic missiles were made. He did not identify the company from which he obtained the downloads he mentioned.
Eveleth says it took Iran several years to acquire advanced industrial equipment to make rocket fuel mixtures, investing huge capital, and he thought it would be very difficult to replace.
Thanks to these precision strikes, he said, Israel is likely to significantly limit Iran’s ability to mass-produce missiles, making a potential missile attack like the one on October 1 more difficult. “The hits seem to have been extremely accurate,” he noted.
Iran has the largest stockpile of missiles in the Middle East, and US officials believe Tehran has supplied missiles to Russia, Yemen’s Houthis and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Tehran and Moscow have denied that Russia has received missiles from Iran.