Iran tight-lipped on cause of deadly port explosion that killed at least 40 people

By Leila Gharagozlou, Tim Lister, Eve Brennan and Frankie Vetch, CNN

(CNN) — Iranian authorities have not said what caused the massive explosion at the port of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, killing at least 40 people, amid unconfirmed reports of 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 has spiked sharply, with 1,000 others reported injured, according to the Associated Press, citing Iranian state TV. Of those wounded, 190 remain in hospital, said Pir Hossein Kolivand, head of Iran’s Red Crescent society.

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. Emergency workers hoped the blaze would be fully extinguished by Sunday afternoon, after aircraft doused the site with seawater. About 80% of the fires had been contained, Iranian state media reported earlier.

CNN has previously reported that hundreds of tons of a critical chemical for fueling Iran’s ballistic missile program arrived at the port in February. Another shipment is reported to have arrived in March.

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 material 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.

“We have to find out why it happened,” Pezeshkian said at a meeting with officials aired by Iranian state television.

The region’s governor, Mohammad Ashouri, declared three days of mourning.

Reports of chemical fuel ‘for missiles’

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.

Videos and images from the scene, some of which have been geolocated by CNN, show orange-brown smoke rising from part of the port where containers were stacked. Such a color would suggest a chemical such as sodium or ammonia was involved.

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.”

CNN cannot confirm what was being stored in the area at the time of the explosion and it is unclear why such chemicals would be kept at port for so long.

Other experts suggested more mundane chemicals might explain the huge blast.

“This bears the hallmarks of an ammonium nitrate explosion. Ammonium nitrate is a commodity chemical that is widely used as a fertilizer and as an industrial explosive, but it is well known that poor storage can significantly raise the risk of an explosion in the event of a fire.” said Andrea Sella, a professor of chemistry at University College London.

“Material ignites and burns fiercely less than a minute later followed seconds later by the devastating detonation. It is the supersonic pressure wave from that that would have shattered windows.”

In February CNN reported that the first of two vessels carrying 1,000 tons of a Chinese-made chemical that could be a key component in fuel for Iran’s military missile program had anchored outside Bandar Abbas.

The ship, Golbon, had left the Chinese port of Taicang in January loaded with most of a 1,000-ton shipment of sodium perchlorate, the main precursor in the solid propellant that powers Iran’s mid-range conventional missiles, according to two European intelligence sources who spoke with CNN.

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.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry told CNN in February that “China has consistently abided by export controls on dual-use items in accordance with its international obligations and domestic laws and regulations,” adding that “sodium perchlorate is not a controlled item by China, and its export would be considered normal trade.”

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