Iran Drone Attack: Everything We Know So Far

An ammunition factory in the city of Isfahan, central Iran was struck by drones at about 11:30 pm on Saturday night. Malicious media reporting and social media posts sought to spin the story into evidence of a broad, coordinated attack against the Islamic Republic. Here’s what we really know so far about the incident.

Iranian authorities have launched a formal investigation into the circumstances behind the drone attack targeting a Defense Ministry factory in Isfahan.

“No casualties have been identified in the incident, and an investigation into its causes has been launched,” an official told local media Sunday.

Iran’s Defense Ministry said earlier that an attempt had been made to strike the Isfahan plant using three quadcopter-style drones, with one drone shot down by air defenses, and two others blown up after being caught in “defense traps.”

Footage posted to social media showed an explosion over the roof of the plant, followed by a plume of smoke rising into the night sky as onlookers filmed the scene using their phones.

“Thanks to God’s blessing, the attack caused no disruption to the equipment and the operations of the complex,” the Defense Ministry said, noting that only minor damage had been caused to a workshop roof.

A source confirmed to Sputnik Persian that the unmanned aerial vehicles involved in Saturday’s attack were ordinary off-the-shelf drones, not “strike UAVs,” as initially reported in some quarters.

Psychological Warfare

Iranian state media accused “Zionist user accounts on social networks, especially Twitter” and counter-revolutionary elements at home of engaging in “psychological operations” and spreading “fake news” by trying to link the Isfahan attack to an unrelated incident in Shahid Salimi Industrial City in northwestern Iran on Saturday night. In the latter incident, an engine oil factory was enveloped in a massive fire caused by a leaking pipe, with negligence suspected. However, some social media accounts posted video and photos from the visually dramatic oil factory fire while labelling it as the drone attack on the Isfahan military factory.

#Ukrainian media (left screenshot) are falsely attributing video of fire in an oil purification factory in #Azarshahr located in Northwest of #Iran to the drone attack at an ammunition factory in #Isfahan which is 770km away! ?? https://t.co/kxi9AXLdcq pic.twitter.com/XvkGksxSbp

— Babak Taghvaee – The Crisis Watch (@BabakTaghvaee1) January 29, 2023

No casualties were reported in the oil factory fire. More incidents were also reported online about alleged attacks in Alborz and Hamadan provinces, but officials there immediately followed and announced that there were no incidents of sabotage or terror to report.

Israeli and Gulf media have paid curiously close attention to the Isfahan drone incident. One Israeli outlet reported, citing Western intelligence and foreign “sources,” that the attack was “a tremendous success,” and credited the Mossad with carrying it out. A prominent US outlet citing US officials and ‘people familiar with the operation’ similarly reported that Israel was responsible.

A Saudi news channel alleged that the US Air Force and an unnamed third country were responsible for the attack.

It’s worth reiterating that Iran has yet to attribute responsibility for the attack to any actor or country.

Bad Blood

Iran and Israel have engaged in a mostly behind-the-scenes intelligence war for decades, carrying out cyberattacks targeting one another’s Internet and physical infrastructure, and Israel suspected of engaging in the systematic murder of scientists working on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, and sabotage attacks against these facilities.

Tel Aviv has repeatedly threatened to launch air strikes on the Iranian nuclear program, laying out a special five billion shekel ($1.5 billion US) allowance for the mission and drilling alongside US aircraft through 2022. Iran has repeatedly warned Israel and its American allies against taking such a step, saying Tel Aviv would have to spend “thousands of billions of dollars” to repair its cities following the inevitable “crushing” Iranian response involving its vast arsenal of conventional ballistic and cruise missiles.

This week, former Israeli Navy chief Eli Marum urged the Benjamin Netanyahu government to strike Iran “sooner rather than later,” with “sooner…mean[ing] in the upcoming year,” because Tehran is on “the threshold” of building a nuclear bomb.

Iran has repeatedly rejected nukes and all other weapons for mass destruction from its defense doctrine, and has accused Israel and the international community of astounding hypocrisy in focusing on the Islamic Republic’s peaceful nuclear energy program while failing to pay attention to Tel Aviv’s actual (suspected) nuclear weapons status.

Along with Israeli and US intelligence, Iran is fighting a domestic insurgency known as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), a US, Israeli, and Gulf State-backed paramilitary force waging low-intensity warfare against the Islamic Republic since the early 1980s, and responsible for a string of deadly terrorist attacks across the country.

CIA head William Burns arrived in Israel on Thursday for talks with government and intelligence officials, purportedly focusing on easing tensions between the Jewish state and the Palestinian Authority amid a string of back-and-forth killings and terror attacks. Burns’ trip will be followed up by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s own visit to Israel the following Monday, with Blinken expected to bring up “threats posed by Iran” in talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.