Iran secretly replaced radar after air strike
Claims Tehran moved damaged equipment in attempt to minimise scale of Israel’s response
IRAN replaced a destroyed radar installation within hours of an Israeli strike on an air base last week in an attempt to make it appear as though the damage had been minimal, it has been claimed.
Satellite images of an air base near the Natanz nuclear complex, close to Tehran, show suspected air-launched Israeli ballistic missiles damaged a Russian-made radar installation being used by Iran.
The strike is thought to have been designed to show that Iran’s missile defence systems could be successfully destroyed by Israel from a long-range, effectively acting as a warning. It came in response to an Iranian barrage of drones, missiles and rockets towards Israel on April 13.
Images of the site, first reported by The Economist yesterday, show Iran moved a separate radar battery to the position previously occupied by the damaged equipment shortly after the attack, in an attempt to minimise the scale of Israel’s response.
Iran appears to have replaced the first radar, a Russian made Tombstone installation, with a different system.
It also positioned air defence weapons linked to the radar as if they were ready to fire, even though they had likely been rendered useless.
Immediately after the attack, Iran claimed that it had been attacked by small Israeli drones, but they had been intercepted and no damage had been caused.
The air base is strategically important
to the Iranian regime, and forms part of the protection of the Natanz complex where it is suspected to be building nuclear weapons.
Chris Biggers, a former US intelligence official at the National Geospatialintelligence Agency, said that Iran had deliberately covered up the impact of the Israeli strike to suggest it had been
unsuccessful. “It’s a case of denial and deception to suggest the site is still operational,” he told The Economist.
He told The Telegraph that Iran had also moved its missile batteries away from the site in the immediate aftermath of the attack, in anticipation of a second Israeli strike.
The news comes after Iran suggested that it would not respond militarily to Israel’s attack, despite claiming beforehand that it was prepared to retaliate.
Instead, the regime played down Israel’s strike in an apparent attempt to avoid escalation of the conflict into a regional war.
Last Friday, after claiming that Iranian facilities had been left essentially undamaged, Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister, said: “If Israel wants to do another adventurism and acts against the interests of Iran, our next response will be immediate and will be at the maximum level”.
World leaders, including Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister, have called for both Israel and Iran to show restraint and avoid a full-scale war.
Yesterday, Iran and Pakistan issued a joint statement calling on the UN Security Council to condemn Israel for the attack.
“Recognising that the irresponsible act of the Israeli regime forces was a major escalation in an already volatile region, both sides called on the UN Security Council to prevent the Israeli regime from its adventurism in the region and its illegal acts attacking its neighbours,” the two countries said.
‘The irresponsible act of the Israeli regime forces was a major escalation in an already volatile region’
During a recent visit to Pakistan, Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian president, was quoted by the Iranian state news agency IRNA as warning that any further Israeli attack could result in the complete destruction of the “Zionist regime”.
Pakistan has previously called for de-escalation by “all parties”.