By David Averre Editor
Stunning security camera footage has revealed the utter devastation wrought on a square in Tehran by Israeli missiles amid the Israeli Air Force’s assault on Iran last month.
The shocking clip, which emerged this week after Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire, purports to show the moment a pair of missiles struck Quds Square in the Tajrish neighbourhood of the Iranian capital on June 15.
It was shared by Israeli and Iranian media and is yet to be verified by Iranian officials, but MailOnline has geolocated the footage.
The first projectile scythed into a building on Bahodar Street opposite municipal offices, with the explosion spraying rubble across the road as a thick cloud of smoke and ash rose from the blast site.
Seconds later, another projectile soared in and struck the middle of the road packed with traffic, mere feet away from the municipal building draped in the Islamic Republic’s flag.
The explosion was enormous. Cars were lifted off the ground and tossed aside by the sheer force of the blast.
Huge chunks of tarmac and pieces of debris were ripped up and sent flying through the air. Moments later, they came raining back down, crushing cars and pelting helpless civilians reeling from the shockwave of the initial explosion.
A second video shared on social media in the aftermath of the strikes showed horrified civilians gathered around the blast site.
The entire road was flooded, with the missile having left a gigantic crater and destroyed water pipes and sewage systems.
Iran’s health ministry reported shortly afterwards that 12 people were killed in the punishing attacks, with a further 59 people injured.
On June 12, the UN issued a resolution based on findings from its nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, that Iran was not complying with inspection regulations.
That ruling came after IAEA inspectors claimed Tehran had some 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and could be weeks from having enough material to create several nuclear warheads.
Israel began Operation Rising Lion less than 24 hours later, unleashing widespread attacks across Iran that it declared were necessary to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Its warplanes relentlessly targeted Iran’s nuclear sites, air defence systems and locations its intelligence found were housing high-ranking military officials and atomic scientists.
Operatives from Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, had conducted a sabotage mission, knocking out some of Iran’s air defence systems and missile launchers, opening the door for the air force to pound Tehran with impunity.
In retaliation, Iran fired more than 550 ballistic missiles at Israel over the course of the almost fortnight-long war.
Most were intercepted, but the sheer volume of projectiles – and the use of some hypersonic missiles – overwhelmed Israel’s air defence systems.
Some 28 people in Israel were killed by Tehran’s missiles, but the death toll in Iran was much greater.
This week, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency published updated casualty figures from its so-called 12-day war with Israel, declaring that 935 people were killed by Israeli bombs. It did not differentiate between civilian and military casualties.
The conflict came to an end on June 25 after the United States Air Force (USAF) sent B-2 bombers armed with 30,000lb bunker-busting munitions and ship-launched Tomahawk missiles to batter Iran’s nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz.
In the immediate aftermath of the strikes, US President Donald Trump insisted Iran’s nuclear facilities had been ‘totally obliterated’ and the Islamic Republic’s chances of building a bomb erased.
This week, the Pentagon declared that the attacks had set back Iran’s nuclear programme by 1-2 years.
Washington is now pushing Iran to enter negotiations over the future of its nuclear programme. Both the US and Israel have declared that Iran cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
But Iran’s parliament has voted to suspend its co-operation with the UN’s nuclear watchdog amid concerns it could withdraw altogether from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which obligates Tehran to cooperate with IAEA inspections.
IAEA Rafael Grossi sent a letter to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to propose a meeting and urge the Islamic Republic to cooperate.
‘Resuming cooperation with the IAEA is key to a successful diplomatic agreement to finally resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear activities,’ Grossi said in a statement.
‘I’ve written to Foreign Minister Araghchi stressing the importance of us working together and proposing to meet soon.’
He said IAEA inspectors have remained in Iran and are ready to start working again.
‘As I have repeatedly stated – before and during the conflict – nuclear facilities should never be attacked due to the very real risk of a serious radiological accident,’ Grossi said.
Israel is believed to have dozens of nuclear weapons, though it has never formally acknowledged their existence, and is not a signatory to the NPT.