Iran conducts anti-aircraft missile drills near Karaj city

Exercise close to location of nuclear facilities, as tensions grow over Tehran's atomic programme

An anti-aircraft missile launcher firing during a 2021 joint military exercise by the Iranian Army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. AFP

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps carried out an anti-aircraft defence system exercise near the northern city of Karaj late on Thursday, the state-run Irna news agency reported.

The drills were “preparation manoeuvres” for offensive and defensive forces that are positioned around Karaj, on the western outskirts of the capital Tehran, Irna said.

This comes amid growing tensions with the West over Iran's nuclear programme.

Karaj hosts nuclear facilities and has been targeted by what the authorities called “sabotage attacks” in the past.

Mobile phone footage posted on Twitter reportedly showed residents in the area filming the barrage of missiles being fired into the sky from several locations.

In January, Iran said one of its ammunition depots at a Ministry of Defence building near the central city of Isfahan had been attacked by drones, later blaming the strike on Israel.

Iranian authorities said the overnight drills were pre-planned. But observers noted that Karaj hosts nuclear facilities and has been the target of strategic attacks in the past.

“Iran's regime has a habit of generating excuses when kinetic action happens on its territory that quickly fall apart when subject to closer scrutiny,” Jason Brodsky, policy director of the United Against Nuclear Iran advocacy group, told The National.

“For example, in this case a drill. But we will have to wait until satellite imagery of Karaj comes out to understand if there is any sign of damage which would indicate a strike.”

Iranian authorities said they thwarted an attack targeting a civilian nuclear facility in Karaj in June 2021.

There are two sites associated with Iran’s nuclear programme known to be in the area, including the Karaj Agricultural and Medical Research Centre.

“Alternatively at times there are leaks to the media which indicate a strike happened. If one did, it's very possible that drones were launched from inside Iranian territory targeting a site in Karaj,” Mr Brodsky said.

Iran calls uranium enrichment allegation a 'conspiracy'

The latest development comes as Iranian state television on Friday offered an extended defence against an accusation attributed to international inspectors that it enriched uranium to 84 per cent purity.

An Iranian official calling this part of a conspiracy against Tehran.

Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said any detection of uranium particles enriched to that level was a momentary side effect of trying to reach a finished product of 60 per cent purity — which Tehran already has announced producing.

However, uranium at 84 per cent is at nearly weapons-grade levels of 90 per cent — meaning any stockpile of that material could be quickly used to produce an atom bomb.

Tehran says its programme is for peaceful purposes, though the International Atomic Energy Agency watchdog, Western intelligence agencies and non-proliferation experts say Iran pursued a secret nuclear weapons programme up until 2003.

The allegation IAEA inspectors found 84 per cent enriched uranium threatens to further escalate tensions between Iran and the West.

Already, Israel's recently reinstalled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened military actions against Tehran.