Two people have allegedly been killed after a massive explosion occurred near a suspected nuclear facility in Iran on Sunday evening, prompting speculation of sabotage at a facility long suspected of being an "explosives producing factory" in eastern Tehran, according to Iran's Defense Industries Organization (DIO), which operates under the country's Ministry of Defense. Following the blast, nearby local streets were blocked off, with Iranian security assuming a presence near the facility.
After an explosion at the production plant caused a fire near the Parchin military site, south-east of the capital, two workers were reportedly killed, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported. The incident was first reported by Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency, who claimed that the explosion took place at an "explosive material factory" near Parchin.
Believed to be a key component of Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons program, the Parchin site is closed off for international inspectors, an Iranian opposition website claimed, contradicting that "at least four military personnel were wounded" in the blast, not two.
And even though these official reports acknowledged the existence of Parchin as a military site, they stated that the actual explosion happened at a waste storage depot, which would be considered as a non-military installation.
Additionally, "the explosion came just hours before inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA) were set to tour some of Iran's nuclear sites," according to The Washington Free Beacon.
Meanwhile, while London's Manoto TV reported the explosion to have killed 35 people, Saham News referred to a "strong" and "tremendous explosion" that "shook Eastern Tehran" and blew out the windows of a nearby building and impacted about a 10-mile area. Neither of the reports have been confirmed.
"The Parchin site is among the military sites of Tehran which produce solid fuel for ballistic missiles without any safety rules and precautions," Saham reported, according to a translation provided by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Since 2005, UN's International Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors have been restricted from the top secret facility.
"An opposition group, The National Council of Resistance provided documentation to international inspectors that it claimed showed that Iran was developing a highly sophisticated network of underground tunnels at the Parchin site in order to advance its nuclear research away from prying eyes," according to Breitbart.
For years, top secret experiments involving "high-explosive shaped charges with an inert core of depleted uranium" have been used by Iran's nuclear scientists to test the characteristics of an implosion style nuclear device.
