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Suspicions that Iran is the victim of an international sabotage operation have intensified after a fire at a power station, the third incident in nine days.

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The Iranian capital has been hit by another in a series of explosions, with the latest blast reportedly at a missile plant to the west of Tehran. The explosion was heard in the western suburbs in the early hours of this morning and was powerful enough to knock out electricity supplies in two areas where it is known there are military facilities.

Iran has been struck by a series of explosions and disasters in the past three weeks, including one that destroyed a key unit of its main uranium enrichment plant. The authorities believe that may have been the result of a bomb planted by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. The head of Mossad, Yossi Cohen, has been accused of leaking confirmation to a journalist.

However, Israeli sources have played down the country’s possible involvement in other incidents, which included a fire at a power station and an explosion at another missile plant, east of Tehran. Iran regularly suffers accidents to its infrastructure, including parts with no military application, owing to the difficulty of maintenance while under western sanctions.

The sound of the latest blast was reported as coming from near Garmdareh, a suburb on the edge of west Tehran on the road to the city of Karaj. There are known to be Revolutionary Guard sites in the area. Several early reports said that the explosion had been in a missile storage facility or similar. The mayor of Garmdareh was quoted as saying there had been an accident at a “gas canister workshop”.

Israeli defences are on alert after there were threats of retaliation by Iran if reports of the attack on the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz last Thursday turned out to be true. That blast was reported to have put back Iran’s nuclear programme by a year.

Israel has been attacking Iranian militias across Syria extensively in recent years.

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The US sent a long-range bomber force to the Middle East at short notice over the weekend as leading American, Israeli and Saudi officials held an unprecedented diplomatic meeting on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast.

The show of American air power was headed by B-52H strategic bombers which flew 7,000 miles to the Middle East from their Minot air force base in North Dakota on Saturday.

B-52Hs, the largest of the US Air Force’s bombers, and the longest in service, appear to have been deployed both to deter Iran — the arch regional rival of both the Saudis and Israel — and to provide a show of force in the region as the leaders of Israel and Saudi Arabia and Mike Pompeo, America’s secretary ofstate, gathered for the unprecedented diplomatic exchanges at Neom.

US officials would not confirm how many of the bombers were deployed but a statement from US Central Command said B-52H Stratofortress “aircrews” assigned to the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot air force base had “conducted a short-notice, long-range mission into the Middle East on November 21”, the day before the arrival of Mr Pompeo and, reportedly, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, in Saudi Arabia.

Central Command said the B-52Hs had been sent “to deter aggression and reassure US partners and allies”.

The long-range bombers, which can carry nuclear as well as conventional bombs and missiles, were joined in the show of force by F-15E Strike Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcons.

“The ability to quickly move forces into, out of and around the theatre to seize, retain and exploit the initiative is key to deterring potential aggression,” Lieutenant-General Greg Guillot, commander of US 9th Air Force, said.

According to Israeli sources the meeting in Neom also involved Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Yossi Cohen, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service. It is the first time the Israeli leader has officially met the crown prince.


Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, the Saudi foreign minister, denied that the Israeli leader had taken part, dismissing confirmation of Mr Netanyahu’s presence by Israel’s education minister.

The Saudis meanwhile have been targeted by the Houthis, the Iran-backed rebel movement in Yemen, which has given a striking indication of its advances in missile technology with a precision attack on an oil distribution plant in Jeddah. The missile, fired from a distance of more than 400 miles, was accurate enough to knock a hole in a storage tank at a site run by Aramco, the Saudi oil and gas company.

The rebels have fired a series of missiles at Saudi Arabia, which is backing the recognised government in Yemen’s civil war, but none is known to have been so accurate over a distance before. They released a claim of responsibility saying that the ground-launched missile was a new type, called the Quds-2.

The Quds-1 is known to be a variant of an Iranian cruise missile, itself developed from an old Soviet model.

“Unfortunately the facility was hit yesterday by a projectile, by a hostile attack,” said Abdullah al-Ghamdi, manager of the Jeddah facility, on a tour for journalists to show the damage. He said that production had been restored within three hours. He added: “As you know Aramco has been a target of such hostile attacks. It was a big fire, it was a big explosion but it was controlled.”

UN mediators have been frustrated in their attempts to engineer a sustained ceasefire to the war in Yemen. Hopes for a resolution in the conflict now depend in part on the attitude of the incoming Biden administration.
The president-elect, during his campaign, promised to rejoin the Iran nuclear accord abandoned by President Trump, seek negotiations with Tehran, and put more pressure on Saudi Arabia to come to a resolution in Yemen.

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Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, identified by Israel as director of nuclear weapons programme, ambushed in street

An Iranian nuclear scientist described as the guru of Iran’s nuclear programme has been gunned down in the street in a town near Tehran.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was ambushed in the town of Absard, 70km east of Tehran. Four assailants opened fire after witnesses heard an explosion. Efforts to resuscitate Fakhrizadeh failed, and his bodyguard was also wounded.

An adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed that the country would retaliate against the perpetrators. “We will strike as thunder at the killers of this oppressed martyr and will make them regret their action,” tweeted Hossein Dehghan, a military commander.

The Iranian ministry of defence confirmed Fakhrizadeh’s death in a statement. “During the clash between his security team and the terrorists, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was seriously injured and taken to hospital,” it said.

“Unfortunately, the medical team did not succeed in reviving him, and a few minutes ago, this manager and scientist, after years of effort and struggle, achieved a high degree of martyrdom.”

Fakhrizadeh was identified by Israel’s prime minister in a 2018 public presentation as the director of Iran’s nuclear weapons project.

“Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh,” Benjamin Netanyahu said during the presentation.

He accused Iran at the time of hiding and expanding its nuclear weapons knowhow, saying that Israeli intelligence had obtained a half-tonne cache of nuclear archive materials from the country.

The attack was confirmed by Iranian state TV but then denied by Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) before being confirmed separately by the defence ministry. Pictures of the purported site of the attack also appeared on the Iranian news sites. Security forces blocked the boulevard where the attack occurred.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military said: “We don’t comment on reports in the foreign media”. The prime minister’s office said it would not comment “on those reports”.

The confusion in the Iranian media reflects the high tensions inside Iran, amid reports that Israeli intelligence and secret service have been given the green light to mount attacks on Iranian nuclear installations before Donald Trump stands down as president.

Many Iranian officials believe Trump, in conjunction with Israel and Saudi Arabia, is determined to weaken or antagonise Iran before the US handover of power on 20 January.

The US president-elect, Joe Biden, has said he is willing to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and lift some economic sanctions so long as Iran comes back into compliance with the agreement, especially over its excess stocks of enriched uranium. Israel and Saudi Arabia want the US to remain outside the deal and continue with a policy of maximum economic sanctions.

Fakhrizadeh, on a US sanctions list, was regarded as the main keeper of Iranian knowledge of its nuclear programme. A brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and a professor of physics at the Guard’s Imam Hussein University, Fakhrizadeh was a man cloaked in mystery.

Until April 2018, no photograph of him was publicly available, and after the killing of several other nuclear scientists, a further shield of secrecy and security had been thrown around him, in an effort to protect him against Israeli assassins.

He took charge of Iran’s Physics Research Centre in 1988, and then became head of research at its successor, the Institute of Applied Physics, from where Iran’s secret nuclear research programme was conducted.

He had never been interviewed by a member of the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA, but was named in one of their reports.

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A leading Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated in his car with gunfire from remote-controlled automatic weapons in an operation that took less than three minutes, reports from Tehran suggest.

Israeli intelligence services and the UN’s nuclear weapons experts believed that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was instrumental in Iran’s atomic programme. He was killed as he travelled with his wife towards their house in the suburb of Absard, a weekend destination for the capital’s wealthy residents. Iran has blamed Israel for the attack.

Locals reported hearing a loud blast and sustained gunfire at about 2pm on Friday. Photos show the wreckage of his blacked-out vehicle, which was travelling in a convoy with three other vehicles, strewn across the road.

Dr Fakhrizadeh’s death has embarrassed the Iranian regime 11 months after Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Quds expeditionary force and architect of Iran’s regional expansion, was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad. The scientist had been the target of an assassination attempt in 2008, when a hit squad on motorcycles attached explosives to his moving car.

Initial reports suggested that the latest attackers ambushed the convoy in a bomb and gun assault before vanishing. Other accounts suggested that a team of 12 was involved.

The Fars news agency, which is close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that the shots initially fired at Dr Fakhrizadeh’s car came from a remotely-operated machinegun mounted on a Nissan pick-up truck, which exploded with a self-destruct mechanism.

It claimed that Dr Fakhrizadeh stepped out of the car, thinking it had hit an object or that there was a problem with the engine. No one has claimed to be behind the attack but Tehran has said that it holds Israel responsible.

Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said that there would be “definitive punishment” of the perpetrators.

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I'd be more interested as to why five British MP's and thirty 'officials' were attending a conference hosted by what was previously deemed a terrorist organisation

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The Fars news agency, which is close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that the shots initially fired at Dr Fakhrizadeh’s car came from a remotely-operated machinegun mounted on a Nissan pick-up truck, which exploded with a self-destruct mechanism.

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It claimed that Dr Fakhrizadeh stepped out of the car, thinking it had hit an object or that there was a problem with the engine.

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There has been speculation that his Covid illness had left him impaired. Also, he must be under considerable stress, his legal and financial issues post White House loom large.

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have seized a South Korean vessel “for polluting the Persian Gulf with chemicals”, amid rising tensions between Iran and the US during the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Iranian news agencies published photos showing Guards speed boats escorting the tanker MT Hankuk Chemi and said the vessel’s crew members, including nationals of South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar, had been detained. The tanker is being held at Iran’s Bandar Abbas port city.

South Korea’s foreign ministry demanded the vessel’s immediate release and said South Korean forces stationed in the Strait of Hormuz had been dispatched to the area.

The incident came before an expected visit by South Korea’s deputy foreign minister to Tehran, and against the backdrop of rising tensions between Iran and the Trump administration.

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South Korean forces have arrived in waters near the strait of Hormuz as pressure builds on Iran to free a South Korean tanker it seized along with its crew on Monday.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had taken control of the South Korean vessel, the Hankuk Chemi, and its 20 crew because it was “polluting the Persian Gulf with chemicals”. The tanker is being held at Iran’s Bandar Abbas port city.

The Choi Young, a destroyer carrying members of the Cheonghae anti-piracy unit, arrived in the strategically important area on Tuesday, as officials in Seoul sought a diplomatic solution to the standoff.

Officials stressed there were no plans to conduct a military operation to free the crew of five South Koreans, 11 Myanmarese, two Indonesians and two Vietnamese, according to the Yonhap news agency.

“[The destroyer] is carrying out missions to ensure the safety of our nationals,” foreign ministry spokesperson Boo Seung-chan said on Tuesday.
An unnamed official told Yonhap: “The issue should be resolved through diplomacy. The unit is focused on the safety of our people who use the waterway after the seizure.”

The Hankuk Chemi’s owner said on Tuesday that Revolutionary Guard troops had stormed the vessel and forced it to change course and travel to Iran. That account contradicts Iranian claims that the ship had been stopped for polluting the waters of the Persian Gulf and the strait of Hormuz.

The South Korean foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, did not comment directly on speculation that Tehran had seized the vessel to pressure Seoul into releasing billions of dollars of Iranian assets frozen in South Korea as part of US sanctions against the regime. Kang said her priority was to “verify the facts and ensure the safety of the crew members”. She added: “We have been trying to figure out what happened through the Iranian embassy in South Korea and the South Korean embassy in Iran and are continuing to make efforts to address the situation.”

There was confusion over plans to send a senior South Korean official to Iran this weekend to negotiate the vessel’s release.
Iranian state TV cited a Tehran government official as saying that the vice foreign minister, Choi Jong-kun, had been due to discuss Iran’s demand that $7bn in frozen funds be released. However, a foreign ministry official in Seoul told Reuters that Choi’s visit was “unclear as of now”. Last Sunday, the Tehran Times newspaper reported Iran was hoping to negotiate an agreement to use the frozen funds to “barter” for coronavirus vaccine doses and other commodities. The Revolutionary Guards said on Monday the Hankuk Chemi, which was carrying 7,200 tonnes of ethanol, “was seized by our force’s [navy] this morning”. They added: “This tanker was headed from Saudi Arabia’s Al Jubail port and was seized due to the repeated infringement of maritime environmental laws.”

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Israel launched air raids on Damascus last night, in apparent retaliation for an attack on a cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman it blamed on Syria’s ally Iran.

A volley of missiles targeted bases in the south of the Syrian capital said to be occupied by the Iran-backed militias playing a strong role in shoring up the regime of President Assad.

There was no comment from the government in Israel, though it had hinted there would be retaliation for an attack on a cargo ship, the Helios Ray, on Friday. Syrian state media claimed that air defences shot down “most” of the missiles.

The Helios Ray, a car transporter, was flying a Bahamian flag when it was struck after leaving Saudi Arabia, but it is owned by an Israeli businessman. It was struck in four places, though there were no injuries and the vessel made it to port in Dubai for repairs.

Israel’s intelligence community was certain that Iran was behind the attack and on Sunday Lieutenant-General Aviv Kochavi, the chief of staff of the military, blamed Tehran in a speech to officers of the country’s main signals intelligence gathering unit.

“We have received a reminder from one of the greatest threats in the region, and a reminder that Iran is not just a nuclear threat, but that it spreads and carries out terror against civilian targets,” Kochavi said. He promised that Israel would respond to the attack.

This morning, the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu hinted at Israeli responsibility for the raids in Syria, repeating accusations that Iran was to blame for the explosions on the Helios Ray. “It is indeed an Iranian act, that’s clear,” he told the public broadcaster Kan. “Iran is Israel’s greatest enemy, I’m determined to block it, we’re striking at it throughout the region.”

While the government in Tehran has not made any official statement, the Kayhan newspaper, which is close to the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote that the Helios Ray may have been “trapped in an ambush by a branch of the resistance axis”. This refers to militias aligned with Iran, such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israel believes the ship was targeted as retribution for its clandestine operations against Iran, notably the assassination of the head of Iran’s nuclear programme, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, on a road near Tehran in November. There have been several “low-level attacks” against Israeli targets, such as an explosion outside Israel’s embassy in the Indian capital Delhi that also did not cause any injuries.


A senior Israeli officer predicted last month that Iran would try to avoid a confrontation with Israel because it was waiting to see the Biden administration’s first moves, “but it is likely to try and carry out smaller, low-level attacks through its proxies in the region”.

This is despite the onslaught Israel has waged against Iranian and Iranian-backed forces inside Syria in the last five years, a series of hundreds of missile and air raids intended to stop the transfer of weapons to positions on its borders in that country and in Lebanon.

On Friday, the United States also attacked Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militias on the Syria-Iraq border. It said the raids were a response to rocket strikes on a US base in northern Iraq that killed two civilian contractors, which it blamed on the same militias.

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A US coalition military base in Iraq has come under rocket fire, five days after President Biden retaliated for a previous strike with air raids on Iranian-backed Shia militias in neighbouring Syria.

A volley of ten missiles this morning hit the Ain al-Asad base in Anbar, western Iraq. The Iraqi military and the US-led coalition, which share the base, were still assessing the damage early afternoon local time, but said a civilian contractor had died apparently of a heart attack.

The Vatican insisted that the rocket attacks would not deter the Pope, who is due to make his first visit to Iraq on Friday.


The visit has already been criticised given the prevalence of coronavirus in the country, and fears that services led by Pope Francis might turn into “super-spreader” events.

“The day after tomorrow, God willing, I will go to Iraq for a three-day pilgrimage,” the Pope said in his weekly address today. “For a long time I have wanted to meet these people who have suffered so much.”

Two contractors were killed in a strike two weeks ago against a similar combined base in northern Iraq, outside the Kurdish city of Arbil, which was blamed on Iraqi Shia militias. In response, Biden ordered the bombing of warehouses belonging to what the Pentagon said were the same militias just over the border with Syria, where they are also operating.

Iran denied direct responsibility for the attack, but the exchange has led to a worsening of relations between Washington and Tehran, which had been expected to improve after Biden said he wanted to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal.

After the Syria strike, Iran refused an offer to join preliminary, informal talks on the nuclear programme hosted by the European Union, saying the US had to lift sanctions before it would respond. It has also continued to increase the capabilities of its programme beyond the limits set by the deal, and begun restricting full access to inspectors from the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency.

The rocket attack this morning was confirmed by a spokesman for the international coalition, whose troops were sent to Iraq in 2014 to help the fight against Islamic State.


Since then, their presence has divided Iraqi politics into pro-western and pro-Iranian factions, the latter of which are demanding the removal of western forces. The US has drawn down its number of troops to about 2,500, with Britain having between 150 and 200 troops in the country, but both say Isis still poses a threat.

Washington is also keen not to allow Iraq to fall entirely under the security umbrella of its powerful and anti-western neighbour, Iran.

The rocket attacks may have a domestic purpose. The Iraqi prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, is under pressure to crack down on the militias, who are also being blamed for the murders of activists in Iraq’s restive southern cities where there have been demonstrations against government corruption and Iranian influence.

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