Seems like we're going through the classic travails of overhead photo interpretation. Those shots are nearly-perfect zenith shots, so I've been having some problems just comprehending the shape of the terrain.

The middle resolution view (the one labeled "Eurphates") gave me the context to see that the river's channel is perhaps ~100M lower than the surrounding terrain, and with that my eye recognized that this facility is in a canyon, rather than atop a bluff as my eye first thought (classic innie-versus-outie problem).

So, now I interpet that parking area to the right as cut into the canyon walls. It also seems a bit higher than the main roadway, and that's where I'm not so sure there's a berm surrounding it on the side facing the buildings; it may be a small slope down to the roadway level. It has almost no shadow, in contrast to the stark shadows of anything with significant height elsewhere in the image. The parking area is, I think, just a flat pad somewhat above the grade of the rest of the site.

The rocket test stand theory is intriguing, but the water cooling requirement might present some difficulty, as the site is uphill from the river. I looked around for storage tanks, which would be the logical way to get a good pressure without ridiculously large turbines down at the river, and didn't see any. I dunno...yet, the small building to the north is the right shape to suggest a horizontal assembly area. Damfino...

Isn't photo interpretation fun? Gives us something to disagree about other than politics!