Images show damage from Israeli attacks on two secret Iranian military bases.

The Israeli attack on Iran damaged facilities at a secret military base southeast of the Iranian capital that experts in the past have linked to Tehran’s former nuclear weapons program, as well as another base linked to its ballistic missile program, satellite photos show. analyzed Sunday by The Associated Press. .

Some of the damaged buildings are at Iran’s Parchin military base, where the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects Iran has in the past tested powerful explosives that could power nuclear weapons. Iran has long insisted that its nuclear program is peaceful, although the IAEA, Western intelligence agencies and others say Tehran had an active weapons program until 2003.

Other damage can be seen at the nearby Khojir military base, which analysts say hides a system of underground tunnels and missile production facilities.

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

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to requests for comment, nor did the Israeli military.

But Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told an audience on Sunday that the Israeli attack “should neither be exaggerated nor minimized,” without calling for an immediate retaliatory strike. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said separately on Sunday that the Israeli strikes “caused serious damage” to Iran and that the attack “achieved all its targets.”

Damage spread to three Iranian provinces

It remains unclear how many sites were targeted by Israeli attacks. There have been no images of the damage released by the Iranian military yet.

Iranian officials have identified the affected areas as being in the provinces of Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran. Burning fields could be seen in PBC Planet Labs satellite imagery around Iran’s Tange-Bijar natural gas facility in Ilam province on Saturday, although it was not immediately clear whether it was related to the attack. Ilam Province is located on the Iran-Iraq border in western Iran.

The most extensive damage can be seen in Planet Labs images of Parchin, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of central Tehran, near the Mamalou Dam. There, one structure appeared to be completely destroyed and others appeared to have been damaged by the attack.

In Khojir, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from central Tehran, satellite images showed damage to at least two structures.

Analysts including Decker Eveleth of the Virginia-based think tank CNA, Joe Truzman of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright, as well as other open-source experts, were the first to identify the damage to the bases. . The locations of the two bases match video obtained by the AP, which showed Iranian air defense systems firing nearby early Saturday morning.

The base is linked to Iran’s former nuclear weapons program.

In Parchin, the Albright Institute for Science and International Security identified a destroyed building on the mountainside as Taleghan-2. It said an Iranian nuclear data archive previously captured by Israel indicated the building contained “a smaller, elongated blast chamber and a flash X-ray system for studying small-scale blast testing.”

“Such tests could involve explosives compressing a natural uranium core, simulating the initiation of a nuclear explosion,” the institute said in a 2018 report.

In a post on social media platform X early Sunday morning, the institute added: “It is unknown whether Iran used uranium on Taleghan 2, but it is possible that it was studying hemispheric compression of natural uranium, which could explain its haste and secret work.” on reconstruction after the IAEA request for access to Parchin in 2011.”

It is unclear what equipment was inside the Taleghan 2 building early Saturday morning. At the time of the attack, Israel did not strike Iran’s oil facilities, its nuclear enrichment facilities, or the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

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

“Inspectors are safe and continuing their vital work,” he added. “I urge caution and refraining from actions that could jeopardize the safety of nuclear and other radioactive materials.”

Damage found at Iranian ballistic missile program sites

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

In a statement issued immediately after Saturday’s attack, the Israeli military said it struck “missile factories used to produce the missiles Iran fired at the State of Israel last year.”

Destroying such facilities could seriously undermine Iran’s ability to produce new ballistic missiles to add to its arsenal after two attacks on Israel. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which oversees the country’s ballistic missile program, has remained silent since Saturday’s attack.

Iran’s total ballistic missile arsenal, which includes shorter-range missiles unable to reach Israel, was estimated by Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, then commander of US Central Command, at “more than 3,000” in testimony before the US Senate in 2022. Since then, Iran has fired hundreds of missiles in a series of attacks.

There were no videos or photographs posted on social media of missile parts or damage to residential areas after the recent attack, suggesting the Israeli strikes were far more accurate than Iran’s ballistic missile barrages against Israel in April and October. Israel relied on missiles launched from aircraft during the attack.

However, one plant appears to have been damaged in the industrial city of Shamsabad, south of Tehran, near Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country’s main gateway to the outside world. An online video of the damaged building matched the address of a firm known as TIECO, which advertises itself as a manufacturer of advanced equipment used in Iran’s oil and gas industry.

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