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What might the metallic taste mean? Something nuclear?
What exploded in the incident early Friday that sent a massive fireball into the sky near Tehran remains unclear, as does the cause of the blast.The unusual response of the Iranian government in the aftermath of the explosion, however, underscores the sensitive nature of an area near where international inspectors believe the Islamic Republic conducted high-explosive tests two decades ago for nuclear weapon triggers....Satellite photos of the area, some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) east of downtown Tehran, showed hundreds of meters (yards) of charred scrubland not seen in images of the area taken in the weeks ahead of the incident. The building near the char marks resembled the facility seen in the state TV footage.The gas storage area sits near what analysts describe as Iran’s Khojir missile facility. The explosion appears to have struck a facility for the Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group, which makes solid-propellant rockets, said Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies identified Khojir as the “site of numerous tunnels, some suspected of use for arms assembly.†...
FWIW (it's Iran): https://apnews.com/8d2517ff364bb395f0385859f0fa9d0fSatellite image: Iran blast was near suspected missile siteSounds more like a weapons assembly "Ooooops!" than a civilian gas storage facility "Oops." Or maybe there was some ing somewhere in Israel.
Last week Ed wrote about what Iran called an “incident†at its Natanz nuclear site. Iran initially sought to downplay what had happened claiming that an “industrial shed†had been damage by a fire. But by Sunday, Iranian media published a photo taken from one side of the building and finally admitted the damage was to their main centrifuge assembly hall. Here’s the photo released by Iranian media....It looks bad but it’s hard to tell how bad from this angle. Initial speculation included the possibility that this was a fire caused by some sort of sabotage inside the facility, possibly a cyber-attack. But satellite images of the site show that the centrifuge assembly hall was almost completely destroyed by an explosion:
Interesting article claiming Israel was behind recent blasts to Iranian's Nuckear Programhttps://www.timesofisrael.com/report-israeli-cyberattack-caused-iran-nuclear-site-fire-f35s-hit-missile-base/
Since last month, blasts and blazes have been reported at Iranian sites, including an explosion that killed 19 people at a medical clinic on June 30, plus fires that ravaged a shipyard and Iran's main nuclear enrichment facility earlier this month. The incidents continued through the weekend, when an explosion wracked a power plant in Isfahan province, and fire consumed a cellophane factory in Tabriz.
We’re learning more about Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz. Initially, the event was reported as a cyber attack and cyber may, in fact, have played a part. However, explosives were the main component.The Jerusalem Post reports that the attack was carried out through a device smuggled into the facility and detonated remotely. The explosives reportedly took out both the primary and backup electrical systems. (At Natanz, the electrical substation reportedly is 40 to 50 meters below ground.) The initial explosion is believed to have set off secondary explosions, causing even greater damage.An attack last July was carried out with explosives smuggled into a centrifuge assembly facility at the site. The explosives reportedly were embedded in a heavy table that was brought into the facility. An Iranian official says that this time a desk was used.Another possibility is that the explosive device was placed in components before they were installed at Natanz, so that no agent was needed to smuggle them in. This theory was offered by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert in an interview.
