Qoddousi strictly ruled out "a strike on the complex by an external object," adding that "if it was from the outside, we should have seen shrapnel, but absolutely no such debris were found at the site."

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He did not elaborate further on the "security breach" or "infiltration."

On July 2, Iran reported an "incident" at the Natanz complex, but said it caused no casualties and failed to stop enrichment work at the facility.

Qoddousi's account coincides with a New York Times report from early July, in which an unnamed Middle Eastern intelligence official said the damage to the uranium enrichment facility was far more extensive than the Iranian's had originally claimed.

The official also said it would take Iran at least two years to fix the damage caused to the site and completely rehabilitate its nuclear program. According to the paper, the intelligence official said Israel was behind the attack, which allegedly involved a powerful explosive device planted at the facility.

Several days after the Natanz blast, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi warned that any country deemed responsible for the explosion should expect a strong Iranian retaliation.

The explosion at Natanz came six days after a massive explosion near the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran, which shook windows in the Iranian capital.

Authorities blamed that blast on "leaking gas tanks."

The military site at Parchin has been used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to test ballistic missiles. Western analysts believe the site consists of a vast underground tunnel complex for testing and producing missiles. The site has also been linked to Iran's nuclear project.

The Natanz and Parchin blasts are part of a series of mysterious explosions and fires at sensitive military and civilian sites across Iran in recent weeks.

In the most recent such incident, on July 19, an explosion rocked a power station in Isfahan Province in the country's center.

On Saturday, an oil pipeline reportedly went up in flames in western Iran. According to local accounts and reports on social media, the blast rocked the restive and oil-rich region of Khuzestan in the country's southwest.

Last Wednesday, July 15, at least seven ships caught fire at the Iranian port of Bushehr, Iran's Tasnim news agency reported. Pictures from the incident showed a large pillar of smoke billowing from the area.

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A day earlier, on July 14, Iran executed a former employee of the defense ministry who was convicted of spying on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency. It was the second such execution in the past month.

Earlier this week, an Iranian accused of spying for the CIA and Mossad was executed, according to Iran's official IRIB news agency.

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"Tehran's decision to retaliate to the Israeli and American attacks has already been made and will be implemented at the right time and place," sources in Lebanon told Al Rai, which traditionally propagates anti-Zionist and anti-Israel views.

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The report also said that Iran and its regional allies were planning for the possibility of an "all-out war."

The statements, which haven't been corroborated elsewhere, come amid a series of mysterious explosions and fires at sensitive sites across Iran, including a power station, port, petrochemical factory, a "cutting factory," and military sites such as the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and the ballistic missile base at Parchin, located south of the capital Tehran.

Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency said on Thursday that four "terrorists," who were planning to attack sensitive sites in the city of Shiraz, were captured in Fars Province.

On July 12, the New York Times reported that the string of explosions was part of an "evolving" Israeli-American strategy of "short-of-war clandestine strikes, aimed at taking out the most prominent generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and setting back Iran's nuclear facilities."

On July 13, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi warned that any country that is deemed responsible for the explosion at the Natanz nuclear enrichment center a week earlier should expect a strong Iranian retaliation.

In early May, an alleged Israeli cyberattack caused "total disarray" at Iran's Shahid Rajaee port, causing massive backups on waterways and roads leading to the facility.

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According to the report, the explosion occurred at a "cutting factory" in south Tehran.

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Iranian authorities and state media have not commented on the reported incident, which is the latest in a string of fires and explosions, some of which have hit sensitive sites.

On Saturday, a fire broke out at a power station in southwestern Iran, local media reported.

The blaze, which affected a transformer in the power station in the city of Ahvaz, was put out by firefighters and electricity specialists.

Also Saturday, a chlorine gas leak occurred at a unit of the Karoon petrochemicals plant near the port of Bandar Imam Khomeini in the Persian Gulf on Saturday, injuring dozens, the semi-official ILNA news agency reported.

On July 2, a fire broke out at a new centrifuge assembly center in Iran's Natanz nuclear facility. Officials initially claimed operations were not affected, but on Sunday an Iranian official said, "The incident could slow down the development and production of advanced centrifuges in the medium term."

On June 30, 19 people were killed in an explosion at a medical clinic in the north of the capital Tehran, which an official said was caused by a gas leak.

On June 26, an explosion occurred east of Tehran near the Parchin military and weapons development base that Iranian authorities claimed was caused by a leak in a gas storage facility in an area outside the base.

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The blaze, which affected a transformer in the power station in the city of Ahvaz, was put out by firefighters and electricity was restored after partial outages, Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, a spokesman for state-run power company TAVANIR, told the semi-official news agency Tasnim.

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There have been several other incidents at facilities across the country recently.

Also Saturday, a chlorine gas leak occurred at a unit of the Karoon petrochemicals plant near the port of Bandar Imam Khomeini on the Gulf on Saturday, injuring dozens, the semi-official ILNA news agency reported.

"In this incident, 70 members of the personnel who were near the unit suffered slight injuries [due to chlorine inhalation] and were taken to a hospital with the help of rescue workers," the plant's spokesman, Massoud Shabanlou, told ILNA, adding that all but two had been released.

On July 2, a fire broke out at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility but officials said operations were not affected.

A former official suggested the incident could have been an attempt to sabotage work at the plant, which has been involved in activities that breach an international nuclear deal.

On June 30, 19 people were killed in an explosion at a medical clinic in the north of the capital Tehran, which an official said was caused by a gas leak.

On June 26, an explosion occurred east of Tehran near the Parchin military and weapons development base that Iranian authorities claimed was caused by a leak in a gas storage facility in an area outside the base.

The head of Iran's civilian defense said over the weekend that the Islamic republic will retaliate against any country that carries out cyberattacks on its nuclear sites.

The Natanz uranium-enrichment site, much of which is underground, is one of several Iranian facilities monitored by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog.

Iran's top security body said on Friday the cause of the "incident" at the nuclear site had been determined, but "due to security considerations," it would be announced at a convenient time.

Iran's Atomic Energy Organization initially reported an "incident" had occurred early on Thursday at Natanz, located in the desert in the central province of Isfahan.

It later published a photo of a one-story brick building with its roof and walls partly burned. A door hanging off its hinges suggested there had been an explosion inside the building.

"Responding to cyberattacks is part of the country's defense might. If it is proven that our country has been targeted by a cyberattack, we will respond," civil defense chief Gholamreza Jalali told state TV late on Thursday.

An article issued on Thursday by state news agency IRNA addressed what it called the possibility of sabotage by enemies such as Israel and the United States, although it stopped short of accusing either directly.

"Thus far Iran has tried to prevent intensifying crises and the formation of unpredictable conditions and situations," IRNA said. "But the crossing of red lines of the Islamic Republic of Iran by hostile countries, especially the Zionist regime and the US, means that strategy ... should be revised."

Three Iranian officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said they believed the fire was the result of a cyberattack, but did not cite any evidence.

One of the officials said the attack had targeted a centrifuge assembly building, referring to the delicate cylindrical machines that enrich uranium, and said Iran's enemies had carried out similar acts in the past.

In 2010, the Stuxnet computer virus, which is widely believed to have been developed by the United States and Israel, was discovered after it was used to attack the Natanz facility.

Lukasz Olejnik, a Brussels-based independent cybersecurity researcher and consultant, said that incident did not necessarily say much about what transpired on Thursday.

"Events taking place more than 10 years ago, and once, in themselves cannot form any evidence about things happening today," Olejnik, who formerly worked as scientific adviser on cyberwarfare at the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in an email.

He added that talk of a cyberattack was "way too premature" and that invoking the specter of digital sabotage "might be a convenient explanation for natural events, or incompetence."

Two of the Iranian officials said Israel could have been behind the Natanz incident but offered no evidence.

Asked on Thursday evening about recent incidents reported at strategic Iranian sites, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters: "Clearly we can't get into that."

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The IDF and the Prime Minister's Office, which oversees Israel's foreign intelligence service Mossad, did not immediately respond to Reuters queries on Friday.

Natanz is the centerpiece of Iran's enrichment program, which Tehran insists is only for peaceful purposes. Western intelligence agencies and the IAEA believe it had a coordinated, clandestine nuclear arms program that it halted in 2003.

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The satellite images show a small structure, adjacent to a larger building, completely destroyed with charred ground around it.

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Satellite image shows aftermath of the explosion at Khojir missile base in Iran. One building completely destroyed and a large burn area.

Iran claims a gas tank exploded near a military base. There's no sign of a gas tank here and the blast is inside the base.

Image: @Maxar pic.twitter.com/ofUzOtbvkV

— Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) June 28, 2020

Iranian Defense Ministry spokesman Davoud Abdi told state TV on Friday that the explosion took place at a gas storage facility in an area that "houses a sensitive military site" near Tehran.

He insisted the explosion took place in the "public area" of Parchin, as opposed to the military site in the city. He did not give any information about the cause of the blast.

The military site at Parchin has been used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to test ballistic missiles. Western analysts believe the site consists of a vast underground tunnel complex for testing and producing missiles. The site has also been linked to Iran's nuclear project.

The gas storage area sits near what analysts describe as Iran's Khojir missile facility.

The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies identified Khojir as the "site of numerous tunnels, some suspected of use for arms assembly." Large industrial buildings at the site visible from satellite photographs also suggest missile assembly being conducted there.

Satellite photos of the area on Saturday, located some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) east of downtown Tehran, showed hundreds of yards of charred scrubland not seen in images of the area taken in the weeks ahead of the incident.

On Monday, meanwhile, English-language Saudi new site Arab News published an interview with Dr. Theodore Karasik, a senior adviser at Gulf State Analytics, a consulting firm in Washington, DC, in which he claims there is consensus within the intelligence community that Friday's explosion was the result of Israeli sabotage.

"Although military and defense industry accidents do occur in Iran, the consensus appears to be a cyberstrike by Israel against Iran," Karasik said.

"To be sure, the timing of the explosion is important given continued Iranian mischief in the region. As these tensions will probably grow in the coming months, the tit-for-tat nature of cyberwar is part of a troubled security landscape. The Khojir event is a continuation of the Stuxnex virus used 10 years ago to disrupt and deter Tehran's military industry," added Karasik.

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What exactly 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.

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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.

The blast shook homes, rattled windows and lit up the horizon early Friday in the Alborz Mountains. State TV later aired a segment from what it described as the site of the blast.

One of its journalists stood in front of what appeared to be large, blackened gas cylinders, though the camera remained tightly focused and did not show anything else around the site. Iranian Defense Ministry spokesman Davoud Abdi blamed the blast on a gas leak he did not identify and said no one was killed in the explosion.

Abdi described the site as a "public area," raising the question of why military officials and not civilian firefighters would be in charge. The state TV report did not clarify that.

Satellite photos of the area, located some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) east of downtown Tehran, showed hundreds of 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." Large industrial buildings at the site visible from satellite photographs also suggest missile assembly being conducted there.

The US Defense Intelligence Agency says Iran has the largest underground facility program in the Middle East.

Such sites "support most facets of Tehran's ballistic missile capabilities, including the operational force and the missile development and production program," the DIA said in 2019.

Iranian officials themselves also identified the site as being in Parchin, home to a military base where the International Atomic Energy Agency previously said it suspects Iran has conducted tests of explosive triggers that could be used in nuclear weapons. Iran long has denied seeking nuclear weapons, though the IAEA previously said Iran had done work in "support of a possible military dimension to its nuclear program."

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Western concerns over the Iranian nuclear program led to sanctions and eventually to Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The US under President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in May 2018, leading to a series of escalating attacks between Iran and the US and Tehran abandoning the deal's limitations.

Iran's missile and space programs have suffered a series of explosions in recent years. The most notable came in 2011, when a blast at a missile base near Tehran killed Revolutionary Guard commander Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, who led the paramilitary force's missile program, and 16 others. Initially, authorities described the blast as an accident, though a former prisoner later said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps interrogated him on suspicion Israel caused the explosion.

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