Sean O'Connor,
Indianapolis and Jeremy Binnie, London - IHS Jane's
Defence Weekly
08 October 2014
Satellite imagery indicates that there was an explosion at Iran’s
Parchin military research, development, and production facility on 5 October,
raising fears about safety precautions at a site where nuclear weapons research
allegedly has been carried out.
The Iranian opposition
website sahamnews.org reported that an explosion took place at Parchin at 23:00
local time (19:30 GMT) on 5 October and was so large that it blew out windows
in buildings 15 km away. Iran’s Defence Industries Organisation subsequently
told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that two of its workers had been
killed in a fire, but did not confirm there had been an explosion or explain
the cause of the accident.
Satellite imagery captured
by Airbus Defence and Space on 7 October suggests an explosion did occur at one
of the facility’s internal complexes. Comparisons with imagery from February
and August 2014 indicate that two buildings were either completely destroyed in
the incident or so badly damaged that they were razed the following day.
Several other structures
up to 300 m away from the two destroyed buildings suffered varying degrees of
damage, indicating an explosive event at one or both of the destroyed buildings
resulted in material being projected through the air.
Most of the visible damage
to the structures is minor and limited to their roofs, but some show signs of
far more significant damage, suggesting chemicals or explosives detonated
inside them as a result of the event. Mysteriously, a large building just to
the east of the two destroyed structures appears undamaged.
Some of the debris thrown
out by the explosion was probably removed from the surrounding area in the
clear-up operation that was visibly under way when the satellite imagery was
acquired at 11:15 (07:45 GMT) on 7 October.
The structures at the
affected complex are not surrounded by the earth berms that are normally
erected around facilities where munitions are being tested or stored to
minimise the impact of any accidents.
The same issue was
apparent at a facility near Bid Kaneh, where an explosion killed Major General
Hassan Moqaddam, a leading figure in Iran’s missile programme, and several
others on 11 November 2011.
Israeli intelligence
minister Yuval Steinitz clarified earlier claims about the nature of the
research that is suspected to have been carried out at the Parchin complex in
September, when he said his country had “highly reliable information” that Iran
had conducted tests on internal neutron initiators for nuclear weapons at the
facility. “The use of such material has no 'dual use' explanation since the
only possible use for internal neutron sources is to ignite the nuclear chain
reaction in nuclear weapons,” he said.
Tehran is under intense
international pressure to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to
inspect Parchin, but it has refused all such visits since 2005 and insists the
facility is only engaged in conventional military activities.
***
However, Matthew Kroenig in the conclusion of his book A Time to Attack
writes:
Chapter 3 showed that there are no black swans that are likely to
save us from the Iranian nuclear threat. We cannot sabotage, assassinate,
regime-change, or cyberattack our way out of this problem. We also saw that
allowing Iran to obtain a latent nuclear capability, aka the Japan Model, is
unacceptable and would be tantamount to giving up and acquiescing to nuclear
weapons in Iran.
...
We might be left then with only one option; the military option,
the subject of chapter 6. This chapter made clear that a US strike on Iran's
nuclear facilities is not an attractive option either. Such a conflict would
result in Iranian military retaliation, spikes of oil prices, and anti-American
sentiment. Yet a military strike would also have benefits. It could destroy
Iran's nuclear facilities, set back Iran's nuclear program and create a
significant possibility that Iran would never acquire nuclear weapons. If diplomacy fails, this is our only hope for keeping Tehran from
the bomb
