Last Updated on June 30, 2020, 5:07 AM AST by Anthony Morris
Last week, a massive explosion lit the skies on the edge of Tehran, and the Iranian Government quickly dismissed the episode by naming it as a gas explosion at Iran’s Parchin military base.
It is noteworthy that the Parchin military base used to be the focus of international nuclear inspectors.
The claims of the explosion being a gas explosion, turned out to be false.
Satellite images have shown that the explosion took place at a missile production facility which is not far away from Parchin. This base is full of underground tunnels and is suspected to be a significant site for the growing arsenal of Iran.
However, beyond Iran’s effort at misdirection of the explosion, commercial satellite images showed the telltale burn marks of the explosion as well as the location.
It is still unclear what was the cause of the explosion, whether it was an accident or sabotage or something else.
Israeli and the US intelligence officials said that they did not have anything to do with the explosion.
Meanwhile, in Iran, the sight of the explosion in Tehran quickly surfaced on social media along with the news of a power outage in Shiraz, which is located about 600 miles to the south.
Shiraz also has several major military facilities, and the explosion and the power outage happened at the same time on Friday.
However, there is no evidence which would support the thought that the incidents were related to each other.
Five years ago, nuclear inspectors had visited the Parchin military facility after having years of a standoff with the Iranian authorities.
Renovations at the facility were so extensive that they led to suspicions that the Iranian Government might be trying to hide the past work on nuclear detonation technology.
Overhead commercial photographs have shown a scorched hillside at the Khojir missile production complex which is located in eastern Tehran, where both solid and liquid fuels are made for the missile fleets of Iran.
Anthony Morris covers stories related to politics and regional developments. His in-depth reporting about governance and reforms makes him stand out in regional journalism, with a deep analysis of political trends and their impact on Caribbean communities.
