Satellite imagery shows India's Chabahar terminal undamaged despite viral claims

TLDR

• India Today's OSINT team compared before-and-after satellite imagery and found no visible damage to Chabahar's Shahid Beheshti terminal, the facility India has invested in, despite viral claims it was reduced to rubble.¹
• A watchtower at the separate Shahid Kalantari terminal, about 2.5km north, was destroyed in a July 16 US strike that CENTCOM said targeted an IRGC vessel-tracking network.¹
• Other July strikes hit a walled compound roughly 4km east of the Indian project and burned a cluster of boats near a police outpost about 7km away.¹
• Sentinel-2 imagery resolves to about 10 metres per pixel, so smaller damage cannot be ruled out until higher-resolution imagery of the terminal becomes available.¹
• Whether the India-funded terminal resumes normal operation now hinges on US sanctions and a continuing US Navy blockade of Iranian ports, not on physical damage.¹

Social media posts and some media reports claimed India's investment at Iran's Chabahar port had been "reduced to rubble" after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared an image of a tower collapsing there on July 17.¹ India Today's OSINT team compared high-resolution Vantor satellite imagery from before and after the July strikes, plus Copernicus Sentinel-2 passes up to this week, and found the claim does not hold up for the terminal India actually backs.¹

Why it matters: Chabahar has two terminals, and the strike damage is concentrated at Shahid Kalantari, not Shahid Beheshti, the one India has funded as a route to Afghanistan and Central Asia that bypasses Pakistan.¹ On this reading, viral claims collapsed two physically separate facilities into one, and satellite imagery is what separates the facility that was hit from the one that was not.

Driving the news:

• An October 4 Vantor satellite photo shows the Shahid Kalantari watchtower completely destroyed and an adjacent annex partly collapsed, a structure CENTCOM said it hit on July 16 as part of an IRGC network used to "track and target commercial vessels," a claim Iran disputes, saying the tower guided commercial traffic.¹
• About 4km east of Shahid Beheshti, imagery shows one building destroyed inside a large walled compound, while the rest of the compound and nearby commercial buildings stand undamaged.¹
• Roughly 7km from the Indian project, satellite photos show burnt wrecks where about eight boats had been parked near a police outpost, days after CENTCOM said on July 7 it had struck more than 60 IRGC small boats; the police building itself is untouched.¹
• Imagery from August 29 shows a separate site east of Chabahar destroyed, which India Today's team assesses is likely a Ghadir long-range radar built for the IRGC.¹
• Comparing high-resolution imagery of Shahid Beheshti from June with the most recent Sentinel-2 passes, the team found no visible signs of damage, consistent with India's foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal's July 17 statement that "the terminal itself did not face any damage."¹

The big picture: the India-funded terminal has survived the strikes, but whether it operates again depends on a US sanctions waiver that lapsed on April 26, and on a continuing US Navy blockade restricting traffic to and from Iranian ports.¹ India's $120 million payment toward the terminal was made in full as of August 26, 2025, with no further financial commitment attached.¹