Cargo That Set Off Blast at Iran Port Was Improperly Documented, Investigators Say

Iranian officials investigating a huge explosion at a strategic port in southern Iran have said they found “false statements” in the documentation for the shipment believed to have triggered the blast, which the authorities say has now killed 70 people.

The explosion on Saturday at the Shahid Rajaee port, Iran’s largest, triggered a fire that lasted for hours and emitted towering columns of black smoke, according to local authorities.

A statement released on Monday by the government committee investigating the blast said it had found evidence of “failure to observe safety principles.” It added that investigators were seeking to identify those behind what it described as “false statements” in the documentation of the cargo.

Iranian officials have told state news agencies that the cargo should have been identified as a shipment holding dangerous substances — the details of which they did not specify. Instead, the officials said, the shipment was classified and stored in the port as a container holding ordinary goods.

The Iranian authorities have so far released little information as to where and when the shipment arrived, what substances were in the cargo, and which ship carried the goods into the port, which handles a substantial portion of the oil exports critical to supporting Iran’s foundering economy.

A person with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps told The New York Times last week that the chemical set ablaze was sodium perchlorate, a major ingredient in solid fuel for missiles. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.

The blast on Saturday was so powerful that forensics specialists were still working to identify 22 bodies from the 70 people declared dead, the provincial governor told official news agency IRNA on Monday. Among the nearly 1,200 people injured, state media said, some 120 were still being treated in hospitals.

The Shahid Rajaee port handled 85 percent of Iran’s shipping container traffic last year, according to national statistics. It is situated in a southern region of Iran along the Strait of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf meets the Gulf of Oman — one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes for oil and gas.

In the past, the port been a target of foreign attack: Israel launched a cyberattack in 2020 that hampered operations at the port as part of its long-running shadow war with Iran. Neither Israeli or Iranian officials have made statements to indicate that last week’s blast was the result of an attack.

In a television interview on Monday, Ebrahim Azizi, chairman of the Iranian parliament’s security and foreign policy committee, eschewed any reference to an attack. He also did not respond to the interviewer’s speculation as to whether the importer’s false documentation might have been an attempt to save money.

In its statement, the committee vowed on Monday to make the results of its investigation public “as soon as possible.”