A Huge Fire at the Port of Bandar Abbas

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The latest on the massive explosion and fire at Iran’s port Bandar Abbas can be found here: “WATCH: Explosion rocks Iran’s Bandar Abbas port near IRGC base, 65 killed, over 1,000 wounded,” Jerusalem Post, April 26, 2025:

The death toll from a powerful explosion at Iran’s biggest port, Bandar Abbas, has risen to at least 60, with more than 700 people injured, state media reported on Sunday, as firefighters worked to fully extinguish the fire.

This was a very big explosion, perhaps an accident, perhaps sabotage, for which there three possible explanations.

The first is that there was simple negligence in the storage of chemicals. This would be a variant on the “Beirut blast” that occurred in Hangar 14 at the Port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, when ammonium nitrates — fertilizers — that had been carelessly stored by Hezbollah exploded, leading to a huge blast in which 218 people were killed, 6,000 wounded, 300,000 were displaced, and there was $15 billion in damages. This was the largest non-nuclear explosion in modern history. The result was popular rage against Hezbollah. And right now, the Iranian government has been blaming the explosion at Bandar Abbas on the mishandling of chemical weapons. But will it stay with that explanation, or find another, if the popular disaffection with the government over this sign of its incompetence increases?

A second possibility is that this was no accident, but sabotage. If it were that, it could be the handiwork of the Mojahedin e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian group that wants to overthrow, by violent means, the regime. A fire that huge would wreak economic damage by putting part of Iran’s main port out of commission and show the incompetence, and the impotence, of the Iranian authorities in not being able to prevent it, and in failing to adequately deal with the aftereffects of the explosion. MEK may also have hoped that the massive fire would spread to the IRGC naval base that is situated very close to where the explosion took place.

Still a third possibility is that the fire might have been started by agents of Mossad, who have for more than a decade been engaged in sabotage of both nuclear and non-nuclear sites. In the former category, think of the Stuxnet computer worm that in 2010 Mossad managed to install in the computers that regulated the centrifuges used by Iran to enrich uranium. The Stuxnet malware caused those centrifuges to speed up so fast that they destroyed themselves. Mossad also managed to locate, and spirit back to Israel, Iran’s entire nuclear archive in 2018. Finally, Mossad managed to kill five of Iranian’s most important nuclear scientists, seriatim, including the head of the whole nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. And there have been other attacks on non-nuclear targets, including chemical plants throughout Iran, that are believed to be the handiwork of Mossad. This history suggests that Israel may well have been behind this massive explosion, the effect of which will be to rattle the regime, which would take it as a measure of Israel’s ability to conduct sabotage, and a promise of worse to come. Perhaps the IDF wanted to convey to Iran the message that it must take seriously the negotiations it is now conducting with the US about Tehran’s nuclear program.

But if Iran suspects Israel to be the onlie begetter of the massive fire, it will not say so. There’s an obvious reason for keeping quiet. If it were to accuse Israel of being responsible, then its people would expect it to retaliate. But Iran is in no position to do that. It was stripped of all of its aerial defenses by Israel’s attack on October 26, which destroyed Iran’s four S-300 anti-missile batteries and whatever other defensive weapons it possessed to protect against threats from the air. At the time Iran promised a swift retaliation, but more than six months later, it still has not launched a single missile or drone at Israel. And at this point the Iranians would not dare try to retaliate against Israel, if it concludes that the Bandar Abbas port fire was caused by the Mossad, for it knows that right now it remains defenseless. If the Israelis — the Mossad — did cause the massive fire at the port in Bandar Abbas, the Iranians cannot admit it, because were they to do so, it would be too humiliating not to respond, or to respond and then be subject to another battering by the IDF.

If the regime decides it needs to find an enemy to blame, rather than stick with its initial claim of an “accidental explosion,” it would be better for the regime to blame the fire on Iranian saboteurs belonging to MEK, which would justify, at a time of growing popular disaffection, a ruthless roundup of “enemies of the regime” including dissidents, such as those girls and women refusing to wear hijabs, who have nothing to do with MEK but are still regarded as enemies of the Islamic Republic.

Let’s see what or whom the Supreme Leader chooses when the dust settles to blame for the conflagration. It won’t be Israel. But if Israel really has been responsible, we should be able to discern that fact from how receptive to American demands the Iranians negotiating with Steve Witkoff in Oman may soon become. The Bandar Abbas fire, even if not publicly blamed on Israel, will be ascribed to the Jewish state if it was in fact responsible, by the highest echelons of the Iranian government. The fire will serve as a timely reminder of what Mossad can do, a preview of coming attractions.