Karaj

Karaj, capital of Alborz Province, sits 40 km west of Tehran on the edge of the Alborz mountain range. With a population of roughly 1.97 million, it is Iran's fourth-largest city and functions as an industrial and residential extension of the capital, linked by motorway and metro.

The city's nuclear significance rested on the TESA/TABA Karaj Centrifuge Manufacturing Complex, which produced components for Iran's uranium enrichment programme and operated under IAEA monitoring within the JCPOA framework. Israeli strikes in June 2025 demolished both main manufacturing buildings; satellite imagery confirmed the site remains destroyed with no visible reconstruction. In March 2026, Karaj was struck again alongside Tehran in what Al Jazeera's correspondent described as "unprecedented in size and volume."

Karaj is also home to Qezel Hesar Prison (also known as Ghezel Hesar), which has become the primary documented site for wartime executions of protest-era detainees during the 2026 conflict. On 27 April, Jafar Fakhrabadi was executed at Yazd Central Prison, with three Ali Fahim co-defendants transferred to solitary at Qezel Hesar in an imminent-execution signal.

The city's proximity to Tehran means Karaj shares the capital's wartime crises: toxic black rain from Israeli-struck fuel depots fell across the Tehran-Karaj corridor, with the Iranian Red Crescent warning of chemical burns and lung damage.