DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An Israeli attack on Iran damaged facilities at a secret military base southeast of the Iranian capital that experts have linked in the past to Tehran’s nuclear weapons program and at another base linked to its ballistic missile program, satellite images reviewed Sunday showed by the Associated Press.

Some of the damaged buildings stayed indoors Parchin military base in Iranwhere the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects that Iran has in the past conducted tests of high explosives that could trigger a nuclear weapon. Iran has long insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, although the IAEA, Western intelligence agencies and others say Tehran had an active weapons program until 2003.

The other damage could be seen nearby Khojir military basewhich analysts believe hides a system of underground tunnels and missile production sites.

Iran’s military did not acknowledge damage at either Khojir or Parchin from Israel’s attack on Saturday morning, although it said the attack killed four Iranian soldiers working on the country’s air defense systems.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Israeli military declined to comment.

However, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei On Sunday, he told the audience that the Israeli attack “must not be exaggerated or downplayed,” without calling for an immediate retaliatory strike. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said separately on Sunday that Israel’s strikes had “severely affected” Iran and that the dam had “achieved all its objectives”.

The damage extended to three Iranian provinces

It remains unclear how many sites in total were targeted in the Israeli attack. So far there have been no images of damage released by the Iranian military.

Iranian officials identified the affected areas as being in Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran provinces. Burnt fields could be seen in satellite images from Planet Labs PBC on Saturday around Iran’s Tange Bijar natural gas production site in Ilam province, although it was not immediately clear if it was related to the attack. Ilam province is located on the Iran-Iraq border in western Iran.

The most telling damage could be seen in Planet Labs images of Parchin, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of downtown Tehran, near the Mamalu Dam. There, one structure appeared to be totally destroyed, while others appeared to be damaged in the attack.

At Khojir, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) away from central Tehran, damage to at least two structures could be seen in satellite images.

Analysts, including Decker Eveleth of the Virginia-based think tank CNA, Joe Truzman of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former United Nations weapons inspector David Albright, as well as other open-source experts, identified for the first time damage to the bases. . The locations of the two bases correspond video obtained by AP showing Iranian air defense systems firing nearby on Saturday morning.

The base related to Iran’s nuclear weapons program

At Parchin, Albright’s Institute for Science and International Security identified the destroyed building on a mountainside as “Taleghan 2”. It was said an archive of Iranian nuclear data previously seized by Israel identified the building as housing “a smaller, elongated big bang chamber and flash x-ray system to examine small-scale big bang tests”.

“Such tests may have included high explosives that compress a natural uranium core, simulating the initiation of a nuclear explosive,” says a 2018 report by the institute.

In a message posted on social media platform X early Sunday morning, the institute added: “It is not certain whether Iran used uranium in ‘Taleghan 2’, but it is possible that they studied the compression of natural uranium hemispheres, which would explain the fact that i covert renovation efforts are also being rushed following the IAEA’s request to access Parchin in 2011.”

It is unclear what equipment, if any, may have been inside the “Taleghan 2” building on Saturday morning. There have been no Israeli strikes on Iran’s oil industry, its nuclear enrichment sites or its Bushehr nuclear power plant during the attack.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, who heads the IAEA, confirmed this on X, saying “Iran’s nuclear facilities were not affected.”

“Inspectors are safe and continuing their vital work,” he added. “We call for caution and restraint from actions that could jeopardize the safety and security of nuclear and other radioactive materials.”

Damage was observed to facilities for Iran’s ballistic missile program

Other buildings destroyed at Khojir and Parchin likely include a warehouse and other buildings where Iran used industrial mixers to create the solid fuel needed for its expanding ballistic missile arsenal, Eveleth said.

In a statement issued immediately after Saturday’s attack, the Israeli military said it had targeted “rocket production facilities used to produce the rockets that Iran has fired at the State of Israel over the past year.”

Destroying such sites could greatly disrupt Iran’s ability to produce new ballistic missiles to replenish its arsenal after the two attacks on Israel. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guardwho supervises the country’s ballistic missile programhas been silent since Saturday’s attack.

Iran’s overall ballistic missile arsenal, which includes shorter-range missiles that cannot reach Israel, was estimated to be “over 3,000” by General Kenneth McKenzie, then-commander of US Army Central Command, in testimony before the US Senate in 2022. Since then, Iran has fired hundreds of missiles in a series of attacks.

No videos or photos were posted on social media of missile fragments or damage to civilian neighborhoods following the recent attack – suggesting that the Israeli strikes were far more accurate than Iran’s ballistic missile barrages targeting Israel in April and October. Israel relied on aircraft-launched missiles during its attack.

However, one factory appeared to have been hit in the industrial city of Shamsabad, just south of Tehran, near Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country’s main gateway to the outside world. Online videos of the damaged building matched an address for a firm known as TIECO, which advertises itself as building advanced machinery used in Iran’s oil and gas industry.

TIECO officials asked the AP to write a letter to the company before answering questions. The firm did not immediately respond to a letter sent to it.