Iran’s UN ambassador says Israel was behind Isfahan drone attack

Tehran says a Defence Ministry workshop complex was the target of the 'unsuccessful' attack

An explosion in Iran's Isfahan province is shown in a still image from a video posted on January 29. AFP
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An initial investigation has revealed that Israel was responsible for a drone attack in the Iranian city of Isfahan that damaged a weapons depot last weekend, Tehran’s ambassador to the UN has said.

The strikes were a "terrorist attack on the Ministry of Defence workshop complex" and breached international laws, Saeed Iravani said in a letter to the UN Security Council.

"Iran reserves its legitimate and inherent right to defend its national security and firmly respond to any threat or wrongdoing of the Zionist regime [Israel] wherever and whenever it deems necessary," the letter said.

Iranian authorities reported an "unsuccessful" drone attack on a defence ministry "workshop complex" late on Saturday in Isfahan province, home to the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant.

An anti-aircraft system destroyed one drone and two others exploded, the Defence Ministry said.

There was minor damage to the site and no casualties, it said.

On Wednesday, Iran blamed a "foreign security service" for training and arming a Kurdish group in Iraq to carry out a drone attack on the weapons depot in Isfahan.

Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region hosts camps and rear-bases operated by several Iranian Kurdish rebel groups, which Tehran has accused of serving western or Israeli interests in the past.

Saturday's attack bore the hallmarks of another last February when six quadcopter drones carrying explosives hit a manufacturing and storage plant for military unmanned aerial vehicles near the city of Kermanshah.

Israel was accused of carrying out that attack.

Updated: February 02, 2023, 9:32 AM