American and Israeli officials have said that the attack was aimed particularly at Iran's ability to make solid propellant for missiles. (Representative image)
Credit: Reuters File Photo
New satellite photographs suggest that the Israeli military's attack on Iran on Saturday struck an array of sensitive military sites, including a major missile production facility.
The strikes destroyed air-defense systems set up to protect several critical oil and petrochemical refineries, as well as systems guarding a large gas field and a major port in southern Iran. Israel also struck military bases in the provinces of Tehran, according to Iran's national air defense.
The satellite images from Planet Labs, taken in March and on Tuesday, show the Shahroud Space Center in Semnan province, which belongs to Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard.
Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who has been tracking that site since 2017, said it was used to build solid-propellant rocket motors that can be used in space technology, but which are also commonly used for ballistic missiles.
American and Israeli officials have said that the attack was aimed particularly at Iran's ability to make solid propellant for missiles. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech Sunday that Israel had struck hard at Iran's ability to produce missiles and had achieved all of its objectives.
Hinz said he had "high confidence" that the Shahroud facility was used in the mass production of intermediate-range ballistic missiles that could be used to target Israel. Comparing the images from March and from Tuesday, he said Israel had "bombed the central building, which was associated with solid-propellant rocket production."
In recent years, the Revolutionary Guard has developed a missile development program separate from the Iranian armed forces' program, Hinz said. The Shahroud facility contains infrastructure for a space program, but solid-propellant facilities are "inherently versatile" and can easily be adapted for making missiles, he said.
He said there were signs of missile production in the image from March, including the presence of crates for ballistic missile motors and many storage bunkers. "You don't need so many storage bunkers for a space program," Hinz said.
Joseph Bermudez, a senior fellow for imagery analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, also said the facility's design suggested it was used to make solid-propellant rockets for munitions.
Bermudez noted that the central building in the images was surrounded by a large, earthen berm, and that nearby buildings had similar, smaller embankments built around them -- presumably for absorbing blasts -- as well as bunkers.
Solid propellant is useful for weapons systems because it can be stored longer, and because rockets that use it can be launched more quickly than ones that rely on liquid propellant, Bermudez said.
Hinz said Israel's strikes on Iran were limited in scope but "quite effective." He said they appeared to have targeted key points in the production process in an attempt "to kick Iranian solid-propellant ballistic missile infrastructure out of production."
Initial reports suggested that three of Iran's four factories for missile production had been hit on Saturday, and though the extent of the damage was not yet clear, Hinz said he had seen enough to believe that the attack was "significant."
Iran attacked Israel earlier this month, calling it a response to the July assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which was widely attributed to Israel, as well as the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike near Beirut in late September. An Iranian commander also died in that strike.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has the authority to order strikes on Israel. On Sunday, in his first public comments about Israel's attack, he said its effects "should neither be magnified nor downplayed," Iranian state media reported.
The statement suggested that another attack on Israel could be coming. Certainly, Israel was bracing for one.
Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff of the Israeli military, said Tuesday that if Iran struck again, "We will once again know how to reach Iran, with capabilities that we did not even use this time, and strike very, very hard at both their capabilities and locations."
"This is not over," he said. "We are still in the midst of it."