The large, deadly explosion at an Iran military base in Iran on Nov. 12, which Iranian authorities have called an accident that set back research work there by a few days, appears to have been far more devastating than their description suggested, according to an analysis of newly released commercial satellite images of the blast site. 
 
 The images reveal vast destruction and chaotic disarray across a sprawling complex composed of more than a dozen buildings and large structures. 
 
 The Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington, made the satellite images public Monday, along with an analysis of the damage. “It was pretty amazing to see that the entire facility was destroyed,” Paul Brannan, the report’s author, said Tuesday in an interview. “There were only a few buildings left standing.” 
 
 It was impossible to determine from the images whether the explosion had been a simple accident or an act of sabotage. 
 
 The force of the explosion was so great that it shook windows in many surrounding towns, according to Iranian news sites and witnesses quoted at the time. But no photographs of the blast damage were released by the Iranian government, which has become increasingly sensitive about its military capabilities as tensions escalate with the West over its missile and nuclear programs. 
 
 The base, set in an isolated patch of Iranian desert ringed by a security cordon, is about 30 miles west of Tehran and three miles west of the town of Bidganeh. 
 
 The explosion is already known to have killed 17 members of the armed forces, including a founder of the country’s missile program, Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam. 
 
 Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, presided over a vast state funeral for General Moghaddam and 16 other members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps two days after the explosion. The showy memorial service underscored General Moghaddam’s importance. 
 
 Hassan Firouzabadi, the Iranian military chief of staff, said on Nov. 16 that the blast occurred while researchers were working on weapons capable of delivering Israel a “strong punch in the mouth.” He also said their research would result in only a “short-term delay of a few days.” But it was hard to reconcile his appraisal with the obliteration seen in the satellite image. 
 
 The spy-satellite business, once a secretive monopoly of advanced nations, went commercial starting more than a decade ago. Today, a new generation of civilian satellites can peer down from orbit to see objects on the ground as small as two or three feet wide — enough to distinguish between a car and a truck. 
 
 Last week, on Nov. 22, a commercial satellite operated by DigitalGlobe snapped an image of the stricken base. It showed that most of its buildings had been destroyed or extensively damaged. 
 
 In its analysis, the Institute for Science and International Security noted that some of the destruction may have resulted from subsequent demolition of buildings and the removal of debris that may have occurred. But it also discounted that possibility. 
 
 “There do not appear to be many pieces of heavy equipment such as cranes or dump trucks on the site, and a considerable amount of debris is still present,” the report noted. “About the same number of trucks are visible in the image after the blast as in an image from approximately two months prior to the blast. Thus, most of the damage seen in the Nov. 22, 2011, image likely resulted from the explosion.” 
 
 In the interview, Mr. Brannan said that the institute’s sources indicated that the blast occurred while rocket engineers were performing a volatile procedure with a missile engine. 
 
 His report called the work integral to “a major milestone in the development of a new missile.” ||||| At an Iranian military base 30 miles west of Tehran , engineers were working on weapons that the armed forces chief of staff had boasted could give Israel a "strong punch in the mouth."But then a huge explosion ripped through the Revolutionary Guard Corps base on Nov. 12, leveling most of the buildings. Government officials said 17 people were killed, including a founder of Iran's ballistic missile program, Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam.Iranian officials called the blast an accident. Perhaps it was.Decades of international sanctions have left Iran struggling to obtain technology and spare parts for military programs and commercial industries, leading in some cases to dangerous working conditions.However, many former U.S. intelligence officials and Iran experts believe that the explosion — the most destructive of at least two dozen unexplained blasts in the last two years — was part of a covert effort by the U.S., Israel and others to disable Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The goal, the experts say, is to derail what those nations fear is Iran's quest for nuclear weapons capability and to stave off an Israeli or U.S. airstrike to eliminate or lessen the threat."It looks like the 21st century form of war," said Patrick Clawson, who directs the Iran Security Initiative at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington think tank. "It does appear that there is a campaign of assassinations and cyber war, as well as the semi-acknowledged campaign of sabotage."Or perhaps not. Any such operation would be highly classified, and those who might know aren't talking. The result is Washington's latest national security parlor game — trying to figure out who, if anyone, is responsible for the unusual incidents.For years, the U.S. and its allies have sought to hinder Iran's weapons programs by secretly supplying faulty parts, plans or software, former intelligence officials say. No proof of sabotage has emerged, but Iran's nuclear program clearly has hit obstacles that thwarted progress in recent years."We definitely are doing that," said Art Keller, a former CIA case officer who worked on Iran. "It's pretty much the stated mission of the [CIA's] counter-proliferation division to do what it takes to slow … Iran's weapons of mass destruction program."Iran insists that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only.Many Western experts are convinced that American and Israeli engineers secretly fed the Stuxnet computer worm into Iran's nuclear program in 2010. The virus reportedly caused centrifuges used to enrich uranium to spin out of control and shatter. Neither the U.S. nor Israeli government has acknowledged any role in the apparent cyber-attack.Nor did anyone claim responsibility after two senior nuclear physicists were killed, and a third wounded, by bombs attached to their cars or nearby motorcycles in January and November last year.Militants waving pictures of one of the slain scientists stormed the British Embassy in Tehran last week, setting fires and causing extensive damage. Several European countries recalled their envoys from Iran after the British government closed its embassy and expelled Iranian diplomats from London.Like the deaths, the explosions have drawn special scrutiny in the think tanks of Washington, where Iran watchers have tracked reports of unexplained blasts in Iranian gas pipelines, oil installations and military facilities.In October, Iranian news services reported three such explosions in a 24-hour period. The blasts killed two people. Another large blast was reported last week in Esfahan, Iran's third-largest city.Some analysts suspect that the CIA and Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad, are involved, with possible help from the MEK, a fringe Iranian group that the State Department lists as a terrorist organization, although it has many allies in Washington's foreign policy establishment. Based in Iraq , the group is believed to have links to dissident networks inside Iran.Iran claims to have arrested dozens of CIA informants in recent months, and U.S. officials acknowledge that a handful of informants in Iran have been exposed. What they did, or where, is unknown. In October, U.S. officials announced that they had uncovered an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.Some analysts caution against assuming the CIA is orchestrating all the attacks in Iran, arguing it gives U.S. intelligence far too much credit. But that doesn't preclude U.S. support for allied spy services in Europe and the Middle East that also target Iran. Still, there is more speculation at this point than hard evidence.A cyber expert who works closely with U.S. intelligence said he is convinced that Israel, not the U.S., launched the Stuxnet attack because U.S. government lawyers would not approve use of a computer virus that could spread far beyond the intended target, as Stuxnet apparently did. That caution, of course, presumes the lawyers knew the virus would spread, and that's not clear. The expert would not speak publicly about classified matters.Whether the White House would authorize the targeted killing of Iranian scientists is far from certain. An executive order signed by President Reagan in 1981 prohibits direct or indirect involvement in assassinations, although the term is not defined.President Obama has authorized the killing of Al Qaeda members and other suspected militants, including at least one U.S. citizen in Yemen.Some analysts claim that the U.S. would not back a bombing campaign that has killed Iranian workers at oil refineries and other civilian sites. It would amount to sponsoring terrorism, a charge Washington regularly levels at Tehran."I do not believe that the U.S. has participated in either attacking scientists or physical attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities," said Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence official who helped expose the faulty intelligence cited by the George W. Bush administration before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. "Selling them bad parts, introducing malware — that does seem to me within the realm of what one might expect from U.S. intelligence activities."Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA operative who specialized on Iran, said he doesn't believe that the CIA could mount a sophisticated covert campaign of sabotage inside Iran, where the U.S. has not had an embassy since 1979. Gerecht long has urged the CIA to mount more aggressive operations against Iran."I just think trying to maintain and run a paramilitary covert action group inside Iran is beyond America's covert capacity," he said.Whatever the cause, headlines about unsolved killings, unexplained explosions and sinister computer viruses have rattled Iranians, especially those who work in the nuclear program, analysts said.Perhaps that's the point."All these things have a profound effect," Clawson said. "You have to watch your back when you go to work. You're not certain what's going to happen when you turn on your computer. You're not certain whether you can talk to your colleagues." ||||| AP Smoke rises from an explosion at a Revolutionary Guard ammunition depot outside Tehran, which, according to Iranian officials, killed at least 15 people on Nov. 12, 2011 
 
 Israeli newspapers on Sunday were thick with innuendo, the front pages of the three largest dailies dominated by variations on the headline "Mysterious Explosion in Iranian Missile Base." Turn the page, and the mystery is answered with a wink. "Who Is Responsible for Attacks on the Iranian Army?" asks Maariv, and the paper lists without further comment a half-dozen other violent setbacks to Iran's nuclear and military nexus. For Israeli readers, the coy implication is that their own government was behind Saturday's massive blast just outside Tehran. It is an assumption a Western intelligence source insists is correct: the Mossad  the Israeli agency charged with covert operations  did it. "Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the official tells TIME, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. "There are more bullets in the magazine," the official says. 
 
 The powerful blast or series of blasts  reports described an initial explosion followed by a much larger one  devastated a missile base in the gritty urban sprawl to the west of the Iranian capital. The base housed Shahab missiles, which, at their longest range, can reach Israel. Last week's report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran had experimented with removing the conventional warhead on the Shahab-3 and replacing it with one that would hold a nuclear device. Iran says the explosion was an accident that came while troops were transferring ammunition out of the depot "toward the appropriate site." (See why ties between the U.S. and Iran are under threat.) 
 
 The explosion killed at least 17 people, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, described by Iranian state media as a pioneer in Iranian missile development and the Revolutionary Guard commander in charge of "ensuring self-sufficiency" in armaments, a challenging task in light of international sanctions. 
 
 Coming the weekend after the release of the unusually critical IAEA report, which laid out page upon page of evidence that Iran is moving toward a nuclear weapon, the blast naturally sharpened concern over Israel's threat to launch airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. Half the stories on the Tehran Times website on Sunday referenced the possibility of a military strike, most warning of dire repercussions. 
 
 But the incident also argued, maybe even augured, against an outright strike. If Israel  perhaps in concert with Washington and other allies  can continue to inflict damage to the Iranian nuclear effort through covert actions, the need diminishes for overt, incendiary moves like air strikes. The Stuxnet computer worm bollixed Iran's centrifuges for months, wreaking havoc on the crucial process of uranium enrichment. 
 
 And in Sunday's editions, the Hebrew press coyly listed what Yedioth Ahronoth called "Iran's Mysterious Mishaps." The tallies ran from the November 2007 explosion at a missile base south of Tehran to the October 2010 blast at a Shahab facility in southwestern Iran, to the assassinations of three Iranian scientists working in the nuclear program  two last year and one in July. (See photos of the semiofficial view of Iran.) 
 
 At the very least, the list burnishes the mystique of the Mossad, Israel's overseas spy agency. Whatever the case-by-case reality, the popular notion that, through the Mossad, Israel knows everything and can reach anywhere is one of the most valuable assets available to a state whose entire doctrine of defense can be summed up in the word deterrence. But it doesn't mean Israel is the only country with a foreign intelligence operation inside Iran. The most recent IAEA report included intelligence from 10 governments on details of the Iranian nuclear effort. And in previous interviews, Western security sources have indicated that U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have partnered with Israel on covert operations inside Iran. Sometimes the partner brings specific expertise or access. In other cases, Iranian agents on the ground who might harbor misgivings about Israel are allowed to believe they are working only with another government altogether. 
 
 Saturday's blast was so powerful it was felt 25 miles away in Tehran, and so loud that one nearby resident with combat experience thought he had just heard the detonation of an aerial bomb. "Frankly it did not sound like an arms depot from where I was because when one of those goes off, it is multiple explosions over minutes, even hours depending on the size of the facility," the resident says. "All I heard was one big boom. I was sure from the quality of the noise that anyone in its immediate vicinity was dead. Something definitely happened, but I would not trust the [Revolutionary] Guards to be absolutely forthcoming as to what it was." 
 
  With reporting by Aaron J. Klein / Tel Aviv 
 
 See TIME's complete coverage of Iran.
– The mysterious explosion at an Iranian military base west of Tehran earlier this month was far more devastating than initially reported, reports the New York Times. Satellite images of the site reveal destruction across a sprawling complex of some dozen buildings. “It was pretty amazing to see that the entire facility was destroyed,” said the author of a report by the private Institute for Science and International Security. “There were only a few buildings left standing." The explosion killed at least 17 servicemen. Iran's military chief of staff said that the blast occurred while researchers were working on weapons capable of delivering a “strong punch in the mouth" to Israel. ISIS experts believe the explosion occurred during a "volatile procedure" involving a new missile.