Iran Confirms Engineer Dead in Research Center “Accident” at Parchin Military Site

Iran Confirms Engineer Dead in Research Center “Accident” at Parchin Military Site

Edited by: Fern Sidman

The Fars News Agency reported that Iran’s Defense Ministry confirmed om Thursday that one engineer died and a second was injured in a Wednesday accident at a research center at the Parchin military site.

Israel National News reported that the Mehr News Agency, quoted Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics as stating: “On Wednesday evening, during an accident that took place in one of the research units of the defense ministry in the Parchin region, Engineer Ehsan Ghad Beigi was martyred and one of his colleagues was injured.”

The Ministry added that the incident is under investigation.

Al Jazeera reported that In June 2020, there was an explosion and a massive fire that was felt and seen in the capital some 20 miles away. The defense ministry said at the time that a gas tank exploded in a “public area” near Parchin and that nobody was hurt.

The Parchin military complex has been under scrutiny before as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had suspicions that it may be used to develop explosive triggers for nuclear weapons, as was reported by Al Jazeera.

Following the signing of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the global nuclear watchdog’s then-director, Yukiya Amano, and his inspectors were allowed to visit Parchin. Al Jazeera reported that Amano also met with former President Hassan Rouhani at the time.

Iran has denied that the Parchin site is related to its nuclear program, though it did admit at one point to using Parchin to test exploding bridge wires, used as nuclear detonators, according to the INN report.

In 2014, a mysterious explosion occurred at the site. INN reported that while Iran denied that an explosion had occurred at the site, satellite evidence received later refuted the denial.

In other Iran related news, INN also reported on Thursday that security officials in Israel are reportedly livid and demanding explanations from the United States about a leaked New York Times report regarding the recent assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei.

The report cited an intelligence official briefed on the communications said to be a secret channel through which Israel updates the Americans on its operations in the Islamic Republic, as was reported by INN.

Israeli officials are fearful that the leak will increase Iran’s desire to stage a revenge operation.

According to the report, the Israelis told their American counterparts that the killing was meant as a warning to Iran to halt the operations of a covert group within the IRGC’s Quds Force known as Unit 840, tasked with abductions and assassinations of foreigners around the world, including Israeli civilians and officials.

INN also reported that Israeli officials said Khodaei was the deputy commander of the unit, and was involved in planning cross-border plots against foreigners.

They said that he was in charge of the unit’s operations in the Middle East and countries neighboring Iran, and had been involved over the past two years in attempted terrorist attacks against Israelis, Europeans and American civilians and government officials in Columbia, Kenya, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Cyprus, as was reported by INN

Iran has never acknowledged the existence of Unit 840.

On Sunday, two motorcyclists opened fire on Khodaei, who was parked in front of his home in Tehran.

Iranian media outlets reported that Khodaei was shot five times, and that his wife found him slumped over in his car.