Israel says it struck Tehran’s Evin prison and Fordo access routes

Israel struck the notorious prison of Evin de Tehran and damaged certain parts of the establishment, which holds many political detainees, said the Iranian judicial power.

The Mizan news agency of the magistracy said that the situation was “under control” following the attack, which said they had violated international law. State television images have shown that the first stakeholders carrying a victim on a stretcher and are looking for survivors in an flattened building.

The Israeli Defense Minister said he had struck “regime targets and government’s repression agencies” in Tehran, including Evin.

The French Minister of Foreign Affairs said that the prison strike was “unacceptable” because it endangered the lives of two of its citizens who were held there.

The Israeli army also said on Monday that it had spoken of access routes to the Uranium Fordo enrichment factory, south of the capital. He came a day after American planes dropped “bunker-busting” bombs on the underground installation.

Iranian ballistic missiles have struck various places across Israel, including an industrial area of ​​the coastal city of Ashdod, near a power plant.

Ten days ago, Israel launched an air campaign against Iran, saying that it was aimed at suppressing what it called “existential threats” of the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The Iranian Ministry of Health claims that Israeli strikes have killed around 500 people so far, although a human rights group has killed 950.

Iranian missile strikes on Israeli cities have killed 24 people, according to Israeli authorities.

Evin’s prisons shelter thousands of men and women, including eminent political dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists and double and foreign nationals.

Denlessly populated residents told BBC Persian that there was a powerful explosion on Monday which broke the windows of neighboring houses.

A verified video has shown damaged vehicles and debris dispersed in a street, while another has shown significant damage to the Shahid Moghaddas prosecutor’s office, a special security branch located inside the penitentiary complex.

It is not clear how many victims there were and if civilians were among them.

However, the prosecutor’s office is generally filled during working hours with relatives, prisoners’ lawyers, as well as prosecutors and judges.

The images examined by BBC Persian would have shown that injured people who had visited parents imprisoned at the time of the strike.

The prisoners of the Women’s Women section would have declared to their families that the ceiling had been damaged and that panic broke out among the prisoners, although they have not pointed out any injury.

However, in section 4, the shock wave of the explosion would have caused injuries to several men who were inside the prison library.

Amnesty International said it was “extremely in distress” by Evin’s reports.

“Deliberately attacking civilian objects is prohibited by international humanitarian law and would be equivalent to a war crime,” warned the human rights group.

Jean-Noel Barrot, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, also condemned the strike as “unacceptable”, saying that she had endangered two French nationals “detained in hostage” in the prison for espionage.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British woman who has been imprisoned for years in Evin, told the BBC that she felt “sick” with concern after the strike.

“When you are in prison, it becomes your house. When I heard this morning that Evin’s prison was bombed, I felt strong pain in my heart. When I was released, I left a piece of my heart there.”

She said that she had done “the most incredible friendships” with her detained colleagues.

She added: “For me, thinking that people who are stuck in prison are afraid, traumatized, worried for themselves, but also for people who are outside – who probably do not know what they are going through – it makes me sick.”

Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz said the Israeli army attacked the “regime targets and repressive authorities at the heart of Tehran with unprecedented force” on Monday.

He said the targets included Evin, the siege of the Basij’s paramilitary resistance force, which helps suppress domestic dissent, the headquarters of the powerful Guard of the Islamic Revolution (IRGC), as well as what he described as the “headquarters of the ideology” and the “destruction of Israel” at Square at Palestine.

The Iranian semi -official Mehr news agency reported that the clock – which has the days until 2040, on the basis of a 2015 prediction by the supreme chief of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that in the 25 years, the Jewish State “would cease to exist” – was not damaged.

The Israeli army said that its fighter planes had targeted several military command centers – including the IRGC “Thar -Allah” installation, which is appointed to defend Tehran against security threats.

The Israeli army also said on Monday that it “had struck in order to obstruct the access routes to the effort to enrich the effort”.

President Donald Trump said on Sunday that an American air strike involving massive ammunition penetration bombs (MOP) “erased” the installation, where centrifugal waterfalls located about 80 m (260 feet) below enriching the uranium at 60% purity.

Uranium enriched between 3% and 5% purity is used to make fuel for nuclear power plants, but 60% is only a short technical step in the quality of weapons.

Iran accused the United States of not showing any respect for international law and said it had already evacuated Fordo before the attack. Last Thursday’s satellite imagery seemed to show cargo trucks leaving the site.

The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday that craters were visible to Fordo, which indicated the use of ammunition penetrating on the ground.

“Given the explosive payload used and the nature extremely sensitive to centrifuge vibrations, very significant damage should have taken place,” Rafael Glosi said at a meeting of the board of directors of Global Watchdog in Vienna.

He said the IAEA observed that additional buildings on the Isfahan nuclear site had been affected by American cruise missiles on Sunday, including some linked to the uranium conversion process, as well as tunnel entries used for the storage of enriched materials.

The United States has also told the IAEA that it had used bombs penetrating on the ground in a strike on the Uranium underground enrichment factory in Natanz, he added.

Grossi has asked for his agency to have access to Iranian nuclear sites to “take into account” the country’s enriched uranium stock. At the end of May, he said that Iran had enough 60% enriched materials to potentially make nine nuclear weapons.

When he started hitting Iran, the Israeli army said it had information showing that Iran had recently made “concrete progress” to the production of components for a nuclear bomb.

Iran denied the complaint and insisted that its nuclear program was entirely peaceful.

Israel is largely suspected of having nuclear weapons, although it does not confirm or deny it.

Update June 23, 2025: A previous version of this article included a video that claimed to be video surveillance images of an explosion at the door of Evin prison. The video had been managed on the Iranian state media and was shared by the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs on social networks. We initially checked the video by geolocation and recence checks, but we now suspect that it may have been generated by AI. The video has been deleted while we work with forensic experts to investigate more about its authenticity, and we have deleted a reference to the video surveillance of the article.