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This video recording is made at 11:30 p.m. Something hits an Iranian military facility. The explosion follows a little later. The images spread online. It is not known who was behind the attacks, but the assumption is that the drones came from Israel.
Myrtle MuellerOutside Reporter News
Iranian videos spread like wildfire on the Internet on Sunday night. They show explosions and major fires. These are not war scenes from Ukraine, but images from Iran. Shortly before midnight, several detonations rouse the city of Isfahan from its sleep, and a conflagration illuminates the night sky.
The Iranian Ministry of Defense has confirmed that three drones fired on the military facility near the Iranian metropolis. One of the aircraft was said to have been intercepted by the air defenses, but two others had struck, but only one roof was damaged and nobody was injured. Also in the northwest of the country, not far from the provincial capital Tabriz, an oil factory goes up in flames. A firefighter is seriously injured, a fire engine burns down. The cause of the fire has not yet been clarified.
The drones in Isfahan had apparently attacked an ammunition factory. The attack may have been aimed at one of the nuclear research facilities in neighboring Natanz, where uranium has already been enriched to 60 percent. Even if nobody claims responsibility for the attack, it is strongly suspected that the drones came from Israel.
Will Iran soon become a nuclear power itself?
To build atomic bombs, 80 percent uranium enrichment is required. So Iran is no longer missing much to become a nuclear power. Since ex-US President Donald Trump (76) withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018, the Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been denied access to Iranian nuclear facilities. The mullahs’ regime recently switched off the surveillance cameras in front of their nuclear research centers. The resumption of negotiations is on hold. Because of the ongoing human rights violations against their own people, the economic sanctions were not reduced as promised in the agreement, but tightened. Meanwhile, Iran is rapidly rearming. The IAEA estimates that he enriched 18 times more uranium than the agreement would allow.
Alarm bells are ringing in Israel. It sees its existence threatened. Iran makes no secret of the fact that it wants to wipe out the Jewish state. The two countries have been waging a shadow war for many years. Iran supports Israel’s direct arch-enemies, such as the radical Islamic Palestinian organization Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah, financially and with weapons. Israel responds with covert attacks such as bombing military bases in Syria and Iraq for troops loyal to Iran, killing nuclear physicists, and cyberattacks on Iranian authorities, infrastructure, and nuclear facilities. Israel has never commented on this.
Don’t hit the octopus’ arms, hit the head
The conflict threatens to escalate. The new ultra-right governing coalition is loudly rattling its sabers. In a speech, Benjamin Netanyahu (73) announced stubborn resistance to the resumption of the nuclear deal with the West. Because, according to the six-time Israeli president, the nuclear deal would mean the easing of sanctions and thus strengthen the Iranian regime. In the summer of 2022, former Defense Minister Benny Gantz (63) was already considering air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, which would be carried out in two or three years. Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing conservative predecessor Naftali Bennett (51) spoke of the “Octopus Doctrine”. From now on, Israel would no longer just hit the arms of the octopus, meaning those hostile groups that Iran supports in neighboring countries, but the head, i.e. the state of Iran itself.
An open conflict in the Middle East would open up another front, the extent of which could not be estimated. Because Israel, like Ukraine before it, is counting on US military aid. Iran, on the other hand, has good military relations with the Kremlin, which already has powerful “octopus arms” in Syria and Libya.