Iranian Engineer Was Killed in Drone Attack on Nuke Site, Report Says

An Iranian engineer was killed and another person injured in a drone attack on a military base near Tehran this week, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Iran's Defense Ministry reported the event at the Parchin complex as an "accident" at a research unit on Thursday, and identified the engineer as Ehsun Ghadbeigi. A later statement from the same ministry said, as per the report, that they viewed the event as an attack.

According to the New York Times report, Iranian sources said that quadcopter suicide drones crashed into a building used by the Iranian Defense Ministry for drone development.

A U.S. official confirmed that it was a drone attack, the report said, but did not elaborate further.

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No country or organization has yet claimed responsibility. Despite a series of similar attacks on weapons infrastructure and shipments in Iran and Lebanon attributed to Israel, Israeli officials have refused to comment.

The site, which is located southwest of Tehran, is used for constructing missiles, ammunition and explosives. Western intelligence agencies believe the Parchin complex used for secret experiments for the development of nuclear weapons.

In 2012, the Associated Press news agency reported that satellite images of Parchin appeared to show trucks and other vehicles, indicating an attempted cleanup of radioactive traces possibly left behind by tests of a nuclear-weapon trigger.

In addition, a diagram showing a special facility designed to carry out controlled explosions at Parchin was leaked by a senior official in an unnamed country monitoring Iranian nuclear activities. He said the cell was used for explosion experiments in 2003, 2005 and 2006. United Nations inspectors also suspect controlled explosions were carried out at the site.

On Sunday, Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei was gunned down outside his home. Khodaei was likely behind a series of plots against Israeli businesspeople and diplomats in various countries over the past few months.

Intelligence sources in the Biden administration leaked to the New York Times that Israel told them it was responsible for the assassination.