According to three Iranian sources, quadcopter suicide drones deployed from within Iran on May 25 launched an attack on the country's Parchin military facility. The attack targeted a site used by the Iranian Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) for drone development and resulted in the death of a MODAFL engineer. A MODAFL statement suggested that Iran saw the episode as an attack rather than an accident, as had been previously reported. An unnamed U.S. official confirmed that drones had attacked Parchin.
News Briefs
May 26, 2022
One engineer died and another was injured in an incident at the Parchin military base in Iran on May 25, according to Iran's defense ministry. The ministry said that the accident had occurred at one of the facility's research units. Parchin was suspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to have been the location of nuclear detonation tests in the early 2000s.
-- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
May 25, 2022
Documents acquired by Israeli intelligence in 2018 and recently shown to The Wall Street Journal show that Iranian military and nuclear officials obtained confidential International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports between 2004 and 2006. The Iranian officials annotated the IAEA reports and discussed how to respond to Agency investigations, including by falsifying corporate records and sanitizing sites before inspectors arrived. In the documents, Iranian officials credited “intelligence methods” for procuring the confidential reports.
-- The Wall Street Journal
May 25, 2022
According to an unnamed intelligence official, Israel has informed U.S. officials that Israel was behind the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei in Tehran on May 22. Iran has accused Israel of orchestrating the attack, but the Israeli government has not publicly accepted responsibility. According to the intelligence official, the assassination was meant to deter Iran from continuing to operate Unit 840, allegedly a secret IRGC Qods Force unit that targets foreigners, including Israelis, for abductions and assassinations. Khodaei was allegedly its deputy commander.
-- The New York Times
May 25, 2022
The Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned Greece’s top diplomat in Tehran over the Greek government's alleged seizeure of cargo from an Iran-flagged ship in Greek waters. Greece is holding the ship in its coastal waters, according to Iranian state media. Iranian media said that the vessel had to make an unplanned stop in Greece's territorial waters due to bad weather and technical issues, and accused Greece of capitulating to U.S. pressure to seize the cargo.
-- Associated Press
May 22, 2022
Two unidentified gunmen killed IRGC Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei outside his Tehran home on May 22. Khodaei's role within the IRGC is unclear, but state-affiliated media called him a "defender of the shrine," language that usually refers to Qods Force units that fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The IRGC said "global arrogance," a term used often in Iran to refer to the United States and Israel, was behind the killing. The IRGC separately announced that it had uncovered an Israeli spy cell operating in the country.
-- Associated Press
May 19, 2022
Iranian oil exports to China fell by approximately 200,000 barrels per day from March to April, according to industry consultants, likely due to a higher volume of competing Russian oil exports to Asia. China, the main destination of Iranian oil exports, began buying heavily discounted Russian oil at triple its previous rate, after Western countries imposed sanctions on Russia. Russian crude oil is usually cheaper to refine than Iranian crude. Approximately 20 Iranian tankers carrying nearly 40 million barrels of oil have been left anchored near Singapore searching for buyers, according to shipping data and estimates by the analytics company Kpler.
-- Al Jazeera
May 17, 2022
On May 17, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), an official Iranian news service, announced that Iran had established a facility for the production of the Ababil-2 military drone in Tajikistan. According to the IRNA report, the Ababil-2 is strike- and surveillance-capable and has a range of 200 kilometers. Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri attended the inauguration of the facility, which is Iran's first military production line located abroad.
-- Associated Press
May 12, 2022
Iraq will pay Iran $1.6 billion by June 1 to resolve outstanding debts and secure its supply of Iranian gas for the summer. While the United States sanctions Iran's energy exports, it has granted Iraq a waiver. Iraq must use a complex payments system to comply with the waiver. Delays in that payment system caused Iraq to accrue debt beginning in 2020. Acting Iraqi electricity minister Abdul Karim stated that Iraq will likely rely on Iranian gas for five to ten more years.
-- Agence France-Presse
May 12, 2022
Satellite imagery and GPS data have confirmed that the Maximo Gorki, Venezuela's only supertanker, conducted a ship-to-ship transfer with a National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) tanker in March. The Iranian vessel transferred two million barrels of condensate to the Venezuelan vessel off the coast of the Maldives. The Maximo Gorki offloaded the Iranian condensate in Venezuela last week.
-- Reuters