Iran Blames Israel For The Drone Attack And Threatens To Retaliation

Iran blamed Israel on Thursday for an attack by a drone that hit a military workshop in the city of Isfahan in the country’s centre over the weekend. It said it “reserves its legitimate and inherent right” to strike back. In a letter posted on its website, Iran’s UN mission said that Israel was behind the attack on Saturday night.

“Early investigations suggest that this attempted act of aggression was done by the Israeli regime,” the Iranian ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani wrote in a letter.

Iran’s suspicions were not backed up by any evidence in the letter.

The Israeli government didn’t say anything. But since Iran’s nuclear deal with the world powers fell through in 2015, Israel has attacked Iran’s nuclear programme and other sites in what has been a long-running shadow war between the two Mideast countries.

There are still not many details about the attack in Isfahan, which happened around 11:30 pm on Saturday.

In a statement from the Defense Ministry, they said that three drones were launched from the site and that two of them were shot down.

The ministry said that a third missile made it through and hit the building, causing “minor damage” to the roof but not hurting anyone.

Later, Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, called the drones “quadcopters with bomblets.”

Quadcopters have four blades, which is how they got their name. They are usually controlled by a remote from a short distance. Later, Iranian state TV showed footage of parts of the drones that looked like quadcopters that can be bought in stores.

It’s still not clear what came out of the workshop. In his letter, Iravani didn’t say much about it other than that it was “a workshop complex of the Iranian Defense Ministry.”

At first, people thought that the attack might have been done by Israel. In July, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said it had stopped a plan to attack important sites near Isfahan.

In October, a segment on Iranian state television showed what were said to be confessions from members of Komala, a Kurdish opposition party that left Iran and now lives in Iraq. They were said to have said that they had been trained by Israel’s Mossad intelligence service and planned to attack a military aerospace facility in Isfahan.

But activists say that Iran has shown hundreds of confessions that were forced on state TV over the last ten years.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council, Iravani warned that Tehran could respond to the attack.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its legitimate and inherent right… to defend its national security and respond firmly to any threats or wrongdoings by the Israeli regime, wherever and whenever it sees fit,” the letter said.

Israeli leaders rarely admit when the country’s secret military units or Mossad intelligence agency do something. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who just got his job back, has long thought that Iran is the biggest threat to his country.

Iravani also complained that Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tweeted after the drone attack, “Explosive night in Iran. Ukraine had warned you.” Iran has given Russia bomb-carrying drones that Russia has used in its war against Ukraine to attack power plants and civilian sites.