Suicide Drones Launched From Inside Iran Hit Parchin Military Site

Suicide drones launched from inside Iran said to have hit Parchin military site

TOI STAFF

A deadly explosion at Iran’s Parchin military complex on Wednesday was caused by quadcopter suicide drones, in an attack that fits a pattern of previous strikes that have been attributed to Israel, The New York Times reported Friday.

The report noted that the strike fits a pattern of previous attacks that have been attributed to Israel, including previous strikes against Iran’s drone program.

Iranian sources told the Times that the drone attack was launched from inside Iran, not far from the Parchin military base — which the Islamic Republic uses to develop missile, nuclear and drone technology — noting that quadcopter drones have a short flight range, and Parchin is a long way from Iran’s borders.

On Thursday, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Hossein Salami said that the killing “will be responded to… Our enemies should wait,” without naming who they were.

This would not be the first time that a drone attack was launched from within Iran’s borders by operatives said to have been recruited by Israel.

Israel did not comment on the Wednesday incident, but it mirrored others that have taken place recently in Iran and Lebanon where Jerusalem has sought to target Tehran’s production and transfer of drone technology to proxies across the Middle East.

A senior Israeli military official told the New York Times that the country has invested significant resources to detect and destroy such weapons, which pose a particular threat given that they can evade the IDF’s antimissile systems such as Iron Dome.

Iranian drones were used in attacks against Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Yemen and even a US base in Syria, intelligence officials told the Times.

Wednesday’s strike came days after gunmen took out an officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the middle of Tehran.