Report: Hezbollah attack on Har Dov ordered by Iran following explosion at nuclear facility

According to unnamed sources in Washington, Iran ordered its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah to carry out Tuesday's attack on Israeli forces patrolling the Israel-Lebanon border following an alleged attack on the Parchin nuclear facility in Iran "by a foreign state," the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Rai reported on Friday.

Hezbollah planted and detonated two bombs in the Har Dov region along the Lebanese-Israeli border on Tuesday, with one device injuring two IDF soldiers. A second blast tore through the same area about 30 minutes later, but failed to cause injuries or damages.

Satellite images taken of Iran’s Parchin military compound after a blast reportedly tore through it show “damage consistent with an attack” at the site, according to an earlier report by the Israel Defense website on Thursday.

According to the report by Ronen Solomon, the images form evidence that “refutes the denials of the Iranian government” and prove that the explosion at Parchin – which has been linked by Western intelligence to nuclear missile fuse trials – “indeed occurred inside the military compound.”

The images “clearly show damage consistent with an attack against bunkers in a central locality within the military research complex at the Parchin military compound,” the report added.

The images show Parchin before and after the October 5 explosion, and expose significant damage to the site, with a number of structures missing in the photograph taken after the reported blast.

Israel Defense said the damage occurred at the center of the Parchin compound, “adjacent to another installation where, according to intelligence sources, the trials being conducted involve controlled detonation of fuses intended to serve as triggers for nuclear devices.”

It noted that a whole series of structures that look like bunkers disappeared after the blast, and that testing units were wiped “off the face of the Earth.” According to Israel Defense, the images were taken by the French Pleiades satellite on the morning of October 7.



The satellite captured what appear to be emergency response vehicles at the site.

On Thursday, a US security institute also said it located via satellite imagery a section of a sprawling Iranian military complex where it said an explosion or fire might have taken place earlier this week.

The semi-official ISNA news agency also reported that an explosion occurred at a military base near Tehran, killing two people.

“Unfortunately, two workers were killed,” the defense organization’s spokesman was quoted as saying.

The Saham opposition website reported that a huge explosion occurred at the large facility in Parchin, located 30 km. southeast of Tehran.

According to the report, the powerful explosion blew out the windows of buildings located up to 15 km.

away from the base, and eyewitnesses could observe the blast from a distance.

Parchin is a controversial military base where Israel and the International Atomic Energy Agency suspect the Islamic Republic is attempting to develop a nuclear explosive device.

IAEA inspectors have not been permitted to enter the site since 2005.

Yaakov Lappin and Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.