Iranian state television reports that a defense plant was hit by a drone attack

Drones attacked an Iranian defense plant in the center of the city of Isfahan overnight, state news agency IRNA reported early Sunday.

The Ministry of Defense said in a statement that the attack took place late on Saturday and caused minor damage to the roof. The report said three drones were shot down by Iranian air defenses.

The ministry does not say who is suspected of carrying out the attack.

Separately, Iran’s state TV reported that a fire broke out at an oil refinery in an industrial zone near the northwestern city of Tabriz. It said the cause was still unknown as footage was shown of firefighters trying to put out the fire.

Iran and Israel have long engaged in a shadow war that has included covert attacks on the Iranian military and nuclear facilities.

Last year, Iran said an engineer was killed and another employee wounded in an unexplained incident at the Parchin military base and weapons development facility east of the capital, Tehran. The ministry called it an accident, without releasing further details.

Parchin is home to a military base where the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects Iran has been testing explosive devices that could be used in nuclear weapons.

In April 2021 Iran blamed Israel for an attack on his underground nuclear facility in Natanz that damaged its centrifuges.

Israel did not claim responsibility for the attack, but Israeli media widely reported that the country had launched a devastating cyberattack that caused a blackout at a nuclear facility. Israeli officials rarely acknowledge operations carried out by the country’s secret military units or its Mossad intelligence agency.

In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for a sophisticated attack that killed its top nuclear scientist.

Iran has always insisted that its nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes. US intelligence agencies, Western countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency have said Iran had an organized nuclear weapons program until 2003.

The United Nations’ top nuclear official, Rafael Mariano Grossi, recently warned that Iran has enough highly enriched uranium to build “several” nuclear weapons if it wanted to.

Efforts to renew a 2015 agreement with world powers that imposed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities stopped last year. Both the US and Israel have pledged to prevent Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon, and neither has ruled out military action.