Iranian authorities have not said what caused the massive explosion at the port of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, killing at least 28 people, but video footage and unconfirmed reports point to the possible presence of a chemical used to make missile propellant.
Eyewitness accounts and video indicate chemicals in an area of shipping containers caught fire, setting off a much larger explosion. The death toll spiked sharply following the incident, with 800 others also reported injured.
One surveillance video distributed by the Fars news agency shows a small fire beginning among containers, with a number of workers moving away from the scene, before a huge explosion ends the video feed.
The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted an official as saying the explosion was likely set off by containers of chemicals, but did not identify the chemicals. The agency said late Saturday that the Customs Administration of Iran blamed a “stockpile of hazardous goods and chemical materials stored in the port area” for the blast.
Iran’s national oil company said the explosion at the port was “not related to refineries, fuel tanks, or oil pipelines” in the area.
Iranian officials have denied that any military materiel was held at the port. The spokesman for the national security and foreign policy committee of the Iranian parliament, Ebrahim Rezaei, said in a post on X Sunday that according to initial reports the explosion had “nothing to do with Iran’s defense sector.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived in Bandar Abbas on Sunday afternoon to investigate the situation and oversee relief efforts, according to state media. The president also met with those injured in yesterday’s blast.
The blast comes at a time of high tensions in the Middle East and ongoing talks between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s nuclear programme, but no senior figure in Iran has suggested the blast was an attack.
Fires at the port were still burning Sunday, although Iranian state media said they were 80% contained.
The New York Times reported Sunday that a person “with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that what exploded was sodium perchlorate, a major ingredient in solid fuel for missiles. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.”
Sodium perchlorate could allow for the production of sufficient propellant for some 260 solid rocket motors for Iran’s Kheibar Shekan missiles or 200 of the Haj Qasem ballistic missiles, according to the intelligence sources.