Few days have passed since a huge explosion rocked the major southern port of Shahid Rajaee in Bandar Abbas in Iran, but the Iranian authorities have remained tight-lipped about its causes.
Their silence has left a vacuum that has been filled with speculation, ranging from comparing it to the Beirut Port explosion in 2020 due to an ammonia nitrate stockpile to suspicions of Israeli sabotage.
The explosion and the ensuing fires left at least 40 people dead and more than a thousand injured after it destroyed large areas of the port’s container warehouses. As the fire had still not been controlled earlier this week, there was no clear final estimate of casualties and losses.
The port lies on the northern edge of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most strategic waterways in the world where 20 per cent of the global oil trade passes through on a daily basis. It is also near the Khuran (Clarence) Strait separating mainland Iran from Qeshm Island, the main terminal for exporting oil and refined petrochemical products.
Next to the port are the main refineries in southern Iran where oil products and petrochemicals are produced.
Across the tip of the Gulf in the Omani capital Muscat, US and Iranian negotiators met on Saturday for their third round of talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme. Israel is not happy with the negotiations, as they could lead to a deal that includes lifting the sanctions on Iran.
Tel Aviv had been lobbying Washington to strike Iran and destroy its nuclear facilities. The port explosion on the same day as the nuclear negotiations fuelled speculation that Israel was behind the blast.
No senior Iranian official has placed the blame on Israel or any other external party. But Israel has attacked Iran before, not only directly striking Iranian military and other sites but also through bombings and assassinations likely carried out by agents within Iran.
Some commentators have even likened the disaster to Israel’s attacks on Lebanese Hizbullah members by its agents inserting explosives in walkie-talkies last year, known as the pager attacks.
Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted an official as saying the explosion was likely set off by containers of chemicals, without identifying them. It said that the Customs Administration of Iran had blamed a “stockpile of hazardous goods and chemical materials stored in the port area” for the blast.
In February, the US network CNN reported that the first of two vessels carrying 1,000 tons of a Chinese-made chemical (sodium perchlorate) could be a key component in the fuel for Iran’s military missile programme outside Bandar Abbas.
It said that this amount of the chemical was enough for the “production of sufficient propellant for some 260 solid rocket motors for Iran’s Kheibar Shekan missiles or 200 Haj Qasem ballistic missiles.”
Other media reports said another Chinese shipment of the solid rocket fuel had reached Bandar Abbas last month.
The Shahid Rajaee port ranks 44 out of almost 3,500 major international ports and sits on the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) linking the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea, Russia, and Northern Europe.
According to the Indian Economic Times, thanks to its strategic position, the port “plays a major role in connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe, helping Iran maintain vital trade routes even under global sanctions.”
The Bandar Abbas Port handles up to 90 per cent of Iran’s container traffic, and its share of total Iranian trade is more than 55 per cent. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that a person “with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),” had said that “what exploded was sodium perchlorate, a major ingredient in solid fuel for missiles.”
Iranian officials have denied that any military material was held at the port. Spokesman for the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian Parliament Ebrahim Rezaei said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that according to initial reports the explosion had “nothing to do with Iran’s defence sector.”
But a report carried by the Middle East Forum website suggested that the explosion was “damaging to the regime’s military capabilities”. The port is located close to the IRGC’s naval bases, which was why the report considered it a “hub for shipments [of arms] to proxies like Hizbullah and the Houthis.”
Such speculation will likely continue until the Iranian authorities officially announce the results of their investigations into the cause of the blast. Though the emergency services hoped to control the fire quickly, it had still not been tamed by Monday morning.
Besides the high death toll and human injuries, the economic losses of suspending the port’s operations have yet to be calculated.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 1 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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