Satellite Photos Reveal Damage to Iranian Missile Bases and Nuclear Facilities After Israeli Strikes
Satellite images analyzed Saturday by The Associated Press revealed some of the damage sustained by Iran's ballistic missile arsenal and nuclear facilities in the blistering Israeli attack on the country.
Images from Planet Labs PBC taken Friday showed damage at two missile bases, one in Kermanshah and one in Tabriz, both in western Iran.
At Kermanshah, where the base is up against a mountainside, burns could be seen across a wide area after the attack. In Tabriz, images showed damage at multiple sites on the base.
At the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, southwest of Tehran, the images show multiple buildings either damaged or destroyed, including structures experts say supply power to the facility. The Natanz images were taken on Friday and Saturday by Maxar Technologies.
Natanz's enrichment plant, where Iran enriched uranium to 60% purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%, was also destroyed.
All the Natanz facilities damaged in the strikes are above ground and it doesn't appear from the images that underground enrichment halls had any apparent damage.
Iran has not acknowledged the damage, though it reported on Israeli strikes in the area.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
14 minutes ago
- Arab News
Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices
Iranian state television on Tuesday afternoon urged the country's public to remove the messaging platform WhatsApp from their smartphones, alleging the app — without offering specific evidence — gathered user information to send to Israel. In a statement, WhatsApp said it was 'concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most.' WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, meaning a service provider in the middle can't read a message. 'We do not track your precise location, we don't keep logs of who everyone is messaging and we do not track the personal messages people are sending one another,' it added. 'We do not provide bulk information to any government.' End-to-end encryption means that messages are scrambled so that only the sender and recipient can see them. If anyone else intercepts the message, all they will see is a garble that can't be unscrambled without the key. Gregory Falco, an assistant professor of engineering at Cornell University and cybersecurity expert, said it's been demonstrated that it's possible to understand metadata about WhatsApp that does not get encrypted. 'So you can understand things about how people are using the app and that's been a consistent issue where people have not been interested in engaging with WhatsApp for that (reason),' he said. Another issue is data sovereignty, Falco added, where data centers hosting WhatsApp data from a certain country are not necessarily located in that country. It's more than feasible, for instance, that WhatsApp's data from Iran is not hosted in Iran. 'Countries need to house their data in-country and process the data in-country with their own algorithms. Because it's really hard increasingly to trust the global network of data infrastructure,' he said. WhatsApp is owned by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Iran has blocked access to various social media platforms over the years but many people in the country use proxies and virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access them. It banned WhatsApp and Google Play in 2022 during mass protests against the government over the death of a woman held by the country's morality police. That ban was lifted late last year. WhatsApp had been one of Iran's most popular messaging apps besides Instagram and Telegram.
Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
'What are these wars for?': Arab town in Israel shattered by Iran strike
TAMRA, Israel: An Arab town in northern Israel paid a heavy price for the ongoing air war between Iran and Israel when a ballistic missile slammed into a home there, killing four people and upending life in the small community. Hundreds of sobbing residents crowded the narrow streets of Tamra on Tuesday to watch as the wooden coffins adorned with colorful wreaths were carried to the town's cemetery. To some, the Iranian strike highlighted the unequal protections afforded Israel's Arab minority, while to others, it merely underscored the cruel indifference of war. Raja Khatib has been left to pick up the pieces from an attack that killed his wife, two of his daughters and a sister in law. 'I wish to myself, if only the missile would have hit me as well. And I would be with them, and I wouldn't be suffering anymore,' Khatib told AFP. 'Learn from me: no more victims. Stop the war.' After five days of fighting, at least 24 people have been killed in Israel and hundreds more wounded by the repeated barrages launched from Iran. Israel's sophisticated air defense systems have managed to intercept a majority of the missiles and drones targeting the country. But some have managed to slip through. With some projectiles roughly the size of a train carriage and carrying a payload that can weigh hundreds of kilograms, Iran's ballistic missiles can be devastating upon impact. A single strike can destroy large swaths of a city block and rip gaping holes in an apartment building, while the shockwave can shatter windows and wreak havoc on the surrounding area. The level of destruction from the missiles has been unprecedented in Israel, even after 20 months of continuous war in the wake of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. Along with Tamra, barrages have also hit residential areas in Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak, Petah Tikva and Haifa. As the coffins made their way through Tamra on Tuesday, a group of women tended to a relative of the victims who had become faint with grief, dabbing cold water on her cheeks and forehead. At the cemetery, men embraced and young girls cried at the foot of the freshly dug graves. Iran has continued to fire daily salvos since Israel launched a surprise air campaign that it says is aimed at preventing the Islamic republic from acquiring nuclear weapons — an ambition Tehran denies. In Iran, Israel's wide-ranging air strikes have killed at least 224 people, including military commanders, nuclear scientists and civilians. Despite mounting calls to de-escalate, neither side has backed off from the fighting. In Israel, frequent air raid alerts have kept residents close to bomb shelters, while streets across the country have largely emptied and shops shuttered. But some in the country's Arab minority have said the government has done too little to protect them, pointing to unequal access to public shelters used to weather the barrages. Most of Israel's Arab minority identify as Palestinians who remained in what is now Israel after its creation in 1948. They represent about 20 percent of the country's population. The community frequently professes to face discrimination from Israel's Jewish majority. 'The state, unfortunately, still distinguishes between blood and blood,' Ayman Odeh, an Israeli parliamentarian of Palestinian descent, wrote on social media after touring Tamra earlier this week. 'Tamra is not a village. It is a city without public shelters,' Odeh added, saying that this was the case for 60 percent of 'local authorities' — the Israeli term for communities not officially registered as cities, many of which are majority Arab. But for residents like Khatib, the damage has already been done. 'What are these wars for? Let's make peace, for the sake of the two people,' he said. 'I am a Muslim. This missile killed Muslims. Did it differentiate between Jews and Muslims? No, when it hits, it doesn't distinguish between people.'
Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
Iran set to show off captured Israeli F-35 pilots
RIYADH: Iran is set to present images of captured Israeli F-35 pilots 'soon,' according to the Tehran Times. The Iranians on Friday said they had captured two Israeli fighter jet pilots, one of them a woman. The Israelis have not confirm they had lost any of its pilots after carrying out a surprise attack on Iran on Friday morning. The two countries militaries have been engaged in missile and drone attacks since then, prompting fears the confrontation could spiral out of control and lead to a major regional conflict.
