But some Telegram channels, including that of Sepah Cyberi, which is affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, accused Israel and its agents inside the county of being behind the attack and warned "experience has shown that Iran will retaliate." "Wait for rogue drones hitting Zionist oil tankers," its posting said. Iran and Israel have been engaged in a shadow war on land, sea, air and in cyberspace for the past three years, with Israel carrying out strikes on Iranian military and nuclear facilities and assassinating scientists and a senior military official. During the tenure of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Israel also started targeting Iranian defense and military officials and key infrastructure. Mr. Bennett called it the "octopus doctrine" of striking inside Iran to damage its capacity to arm proxy militias in the region hostile to the Jewish state.

Israel appears to have been behind a drone attack on a military factory in Iran, United States officials say. Iran said on Sunday that it intercepted drones targeting the facility near the central city of Isfahan, adding there were no casualties. The extent of damage could not be independently ascertained. Iranian state media released footage showing a flash in the sky and emergency vehicles at the scene. Israel was behind the drone attack, The Wall Street Journal cited unnamed US officials and people familiar with the strike as saying.

U.S. Central Command and the IDF are taking part in a joint-military exercise known as'Juniper Oak,' that is taking place in Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. An explosion at an Iranian military facility Saturday evening, which authorities said was the result of a drone strike, comes just days after the United States and Israel conducted joint military drills in the region. Iran's authorities announced Saturday that bomb-carrying drones targeted a "workshop" that operates for the Iranian Ministry of Defense in the central city of Isfahan, causing some damage. The officials did not disclose what the factory produces and said the attack was "unsuccessful." "One of (the drones) was hit by the ... air defense and the other two were caught in defense traps and blew up. Fortunately, this unsuccessful attack did not cause any loss of life and caused minor damage to the workshop's roof," Iranian defense officials said in a statement, according to state news agency IRNA.

Three members of an Eastern European criminal organization with ties to Iran were involved in a murder-for-hire plot against a New York-based journalist, a U.S. citizen, the Department of Justice alleged Friday. A loud blast has been reported at an Iranian military facility and officials in the country say it was the result of an "unsuccessful" drone attack. "One of (the drones) was hit by the ... air defense and the other two were caught in defense traps and blew up. Fortunately, this unsuccessful attack did not cause any loss of life and caused minor damage to the workshop's roof," the ministry said in a statement carried by the state news agency IRNA. Iranian news agencies earlier reported the loud blast and carried a video showing a flash of light at the plant, said to be an ammunitions factory, and footage of emergency vehicles and fire trucks outside the plant.

Tehran, Iran – The European Parliament's approval of a resolution calling on the bloc to consider a "terrorist" designation for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has received strong condemnation from senior Iranian officials and commanders. On Thursday, the European Parliament overwhelmingly approved a resolution that calls on the European Union to recognise Iran's elite force and its subsidiaries, like the paramilitary Basij and the Quds Force, as "terrorist" organisations. It also condemned the Iranian government's response to the protests that have been taking place in the country since September, the executions linked to the protests, and drone sales to Russia, while also recommending sanctions against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Raisi and all IRGC-linked foundations. The EU is not obliged to enforce the resolution. While senior EU politicians have voiced their support for the resolution, it is not expected to be among new sanctions on dozens of Iranian individuals and entities expected to be approved by the bloc on Monday.

Over 100 days of nationwide protests in Iran have demonstrated the greatest pushback against the decades-old regime and its repressive policies, showing the world that the people demand rights they have long been denied. Iranian authorities may be using new technology to help enforce the country's strict dress code for women, expanding the use of facial recognition technology to issue fines and other penalties for those breaking the rules. "Many people haven't been arrested in the streets," Shaparak Shajarizadeh, who fled from Iran to Canada in 2018 after multiple violations of Iran's strict laws and became an activist, told Wired in a report Tuesday. "They were arrested at their homes one or two days later." Shajarizadeh is one of several observers of Iran who fear that the country's Islamist regime has begun to weaponize facial recognition technology to find and punish women who flaunt laws about their dress and appearance in public, a setback for activists amid months of protesting for women's rights and regime change.

Last month, a young woman went to work at Sarzamineh Shadi, or Land of Happiness, an indoor amusement park east of Iran's capital, Tehran. After a photo of her without a hijab circulated on social media, the amusement park was closed, according to multiple accounts in Iranian media. Prosecutors in Tehran have reportedly opened an investigation. Shuttering a business to force compliance with Iran's strict laws for women's dress is a familiar tactic to Shaparak Shajarizadeh. She stopped wearing a hijab in 2017 because she views it as a symbol of government suppression, and recalls restaurant owners, fearful of authorities, pressuring her to cover her head. But Shajarizadeh, who fled to Canada in 2018 after three arrests for flouting hijab law, worries that women like the amusement park worker may now be targeted with face recognition algorithms as well as by conventional police work.

Ministers of the European Union of Foreign Affairs have imposed new sanctions on Iranian religious leaders, senior officials and top state media employees over new crackdowns on antigovernment protests and supplying drones to Russia for use in Ukraine. Twenty individuals and one entity were sanctioned on Monday over human rights abuses, while four more people and as many entities were added over the issue of drones. Sanctions include freezing of assets and travel bans to the EU. The state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting had its assets frozen; the EU said the media outlet was a "mouthpiece" for "the violent response to the recent demonstrations in Iran". Iranians have protested against the government's restrictions on their daily lives since late September, following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic's strict dress code.

Tehran, Iran – Iran has suspended its morality police as the country continues to deal with two months of protests, the Iranian prosecutor general has suggested. The protests erupted shortly after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested by a unit of the morality police in Tehran for allegedly not adhering to the country's mandatory dress code for women. Speaking on Saturday at an event aimed at "outlining the hybrid war during recent riots", which is how Iranian officials describe alleged foreign influence in the unrest, prosecutor general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was quoted as saying by local media the morality police operations are over. The morality police "has no connection with the judiciary and was shut down by the same place that it had been launched from in the past", he said, reportedly answering a question on why the morality police has been shut down. There were no other confirmations that work of the patrolling units – officially tasked with ensuring "moral security" in the society – has been terminated.

Ukraine's state electricity operator has announced blackouts in the capital, Kyiv, and seven other regions of the country in the aftermath of Russia's devastating strikes on energy infrastructure. The move comes as Russian forces continue to pound Ukrainian cities and villages with missiles and drones, inflicting damage on power plants and water supplies, in a grinding war that is nearing its nine-month mark. Ukrenergo, the sole operator of Ukraine's high-voltage transmission lines, initially said in an online statement on Saturday that scheduled blackouts will take place in the capital and the greater Kyiv region, as well as several regions around it – Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Poltava and Kharkiv. Later in the day, however, the company released an update saying that scheduled outages for a specific number of hours are not enough and instead there will be emergency outages, which could last indefinitely. Ukraine has been grappling with power outages and disruption of water supplies since Russia started unleashing barrages of missile and drone attacks on the country's energy infrastructure last month.