Tehran’s outskirts burned through the night after a string of precision airstrikes ripped through a secret IRGC complex west of the capital, igniting fuel lines and chemical stores in what witnesses describe as a “river of fire” racing along a dry canal toward nearby roads and warehouses.

Satellite images and leaked target files suggest the compound, officially registered as a “materials research park,” was in fact a restricted IRGC facility where engineers worked on warhead design, advanced detonators and high‑explosive lenses — components Western intelligence has long linked to Iran’s suspected nuclear‑weapons track. One blast punched a crater into the main lab block; others collapsed tunnel mouths leading into the hillside.

Israeli officials, speaking off the record, call it the “biggest single blow yet” to the IRGC’s nuclear ambitions, claiming years of data, prototypes and key personnel were wiped out in minutes. Tehran angrily denies the site had any nuclear role, branding the attack “an ᴀssault on peaceful science” and vowing that “missiles will answer for every drop of Iranian blood spilled in this fire.”

For ordinary Tehranis, the strategic debate is secondary to the shock: black smoke hanging over the ring road, glᴀss blown out in distant apartment blocks, and viral clips of that blazing channel — the so‑called river of fire — snaking through an industrial belt that suddenly feels like the front line of a shadow war over Iran’s nuclear future.