DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A gas leak at an Iranian Revolutionary Guard center has killed two people and injured 10 others, Iranian state television reported Thursday.
The leak occurred on Wednesday evening in a Guard workshop in Isfahan province, and the injured were taken to a hospital for treatment, it said.
The Isfahan Provincial Guard identified the dead as Captain Mojtaba Nazari and Lieutenant Colonel Mokhtar Morshedi, the report said.
The Guard’s statement did not mention whether the two senior officers were suffocated by gas or whether the escaping gas caused an explosion. It did not say how the people were injured or provide any other details.
There have been several deadly explosions at Revolutionary Guard facilities in recent years. The most notable of these occurred in 2011, when an explosion at a missile base near Tehran killed 17 people, including Commander Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, who headed the paramilitary force’s missile program. Authorities initially called the explosion an accident, but a former prisoner later testified that the Guard had interrogated him because they suspected Israel was responsible for the blast.
The situation has remained tense since the assassination of Hamas’s top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in the Iranian capital on July 31.
Iran accuses Israel of killing Haniyeh, but Israel has not claimed responsibility. Iranian leaders have vowed retaliation against Israel for Haniyeh’s death.
Israeli officials rarely admit that secret military units or the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad are conducting operations, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long viewed Iran as the greatest threat to his country.
In April, Iranian air defense systems were deployed at a major air base and nuclear facility near the Central Asian city of Isfahan against an attack intended as retaliation for Tehran’s unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel.
In January 2023, bomb-laden drones attacked a defense factory in downtown Isfahan, and in April 2023, the country’s air defense systems prevented a drone attack on a defense factory in Isfahan.
Tehran faces major challenges as its nuclear program accelerates uranium enrichment, progressing at a rate closer to weapons-grade levels than at any time since the collapse of the nuclear deal with world powers.
The central Isfahan province of Iran is of interest to Israel because it is home to many of Iran’s nuclear facilities. The province’s underground Natanz nuclear facility is the country’s main uranium enrichment facility. There, centrifuges rapidly swirl uranium hexafluoride gas to enrich uranium.
Iran sees Israel as the prime suspect in a series of attacks on Iran, including an attack on its underground nuclear facility in Natanz in April 2021 that damaged centrifuges. In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for a sophisticated attack that killed its top military nuclear scientist.
