Iran: 'Industrial Sabotage' Behind Death of Defense Engineer

The death of an Iranian Defense Ministry engineer in May 2021 was the result of "industrial sabotage" at a military site in Parchin near the capital Tehran, an Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander was quoted on Monday as saying.

"The martyr from the Ministry of Defense was himself not the target but was affected by an act of industrial sabotage. We must prevent such threats with artificial intelligence methods," Hassani Ahangar told the semi-official Entekhab news agency.

At the start of the month, a report by an Iranian news site said that Ayoob Entezari died at the military site. The news came following two other mysterious deaths of senior Iranian military officials. Entezari, considered one of the top scientists in his field, held a PhD in aerospace engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran and took part in several projects at the Institute of Technology in the city of Yazd.

It was also reported that Entezari specialized in drone and missile development. According to some reports, he died of food poisoning.

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In his comments to the semi-official Entekhab news agency, the commander, Ahangar, did not say who was believed to be behind the sabotage.

The New York Times reported a week before that an Iranian engineer was killed and another person injured in a drone attack on a military base near Tehran.

Earlier, Iran's Defense Ministry reported the event at the Parchin complex as an "accident" at a research unit, and identified the engineer as Ehsun Ghadbeigi. A later statement from the same ministry said they viewed the event as an attack, according to the New York Times.

Parchin is a sensitive military site housing several industrial and research units, where Western security services believe Iran carried out tests related to nuclear bomb detonations more than a decade ago.