US: ‘Abundant evidence’ Iran providing drones to Russia for aggression in Ukraine

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) – Late on Wednesday, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price affirmed that Iran had, indeed, transferred drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), to Russia, which Russian forces have been using to attack civilian infrastructure and other civilian targets in Ukraine.

Price issued a written statement after both Russia and Iran denied such allegations, when the UN Security Council (UNSC) met earlier in the day to discuss the question of Iranian arms sales to Russia.

Iran’s Growing Alliance with Russia

Price’s charges come as it has become increasingly clear that Tehran has aligned with Moscow, as the divide between the US and Europe, on the one hand, and Russia on the other, has sharpened dramatically in the wake of the latter’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine.

Iran’s alignment with Russia was quite unexpected, when the Biden administration took office in Jan. 2021 and made the renewal of the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the focus of its policy in the region.

But the growing Russian-Iranian alliance has created a major obstacle to that policy. No issue is of more immediate importance to the US and its Europe partners than Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine.

In the minds of Western leaders, including Joe Biden, it echoes the start of World War II. They do not want to be the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who believed that appeasing Adolph Hitler would secure peace. As events would show, it did the opposite, and Chamberlain’s misguided attempts to accommodate Hitler, in fact, encouraged him and prepared the way for a second horrible conflict.

US, UK, France Put Issue Before UN Security Council

The US, along with Britain and France, backed Ukraine and brought “the issue of Iran’s transfer of UAVs to Russia at a meeting of the UN Security Council,” Price stated.

The members of the Security Council “received expert briefings from the UN Secretariat” on the issue, he explained.

Russia denied that it was using Iranian drones in Ukraine, claiming that the UAVs  it was using “are manufactured in Russia” and the charges to the contrary, advanced by the US, UK, France, and Ukraine, are “baseless allegations.”

Similarly, Tehran “categorically rejected unfounded and unsubstantiated claims that Iran has transferred UAVs for use in the conflict in Ukraine.”

Iranian Drones

Russia is using an Iranian drone, known as the Shahed-136, for attacks in Ukraine, as The Washington Post reported on Monday. The drone can deliver up to 90 pounds of explosives, and it can attack targets up to 1,500 miles away. The Ukrainians believe that Russia has ordered over 2,000 such weapons.

On Monday, Russia launched some 43 Iranian drones to attack the center of Kiev, Ukraine’s capital city. Ukrainian forces succeeded in shooting down most of the drones, but at least six got through and at least four Ukrainians were killed.

A senior Ukrainian official denounced Tehran for its arms sales to Russia, charging that Iran was “responsible for the murder of Ukrainians.” Moreover, as Reuters reported on Monday, Iran will soon be sending to Russia a short-range surface to surface ballistic missile, with a range of up to 700 kilometers.

European Union (EU) leaders are meeting on Thursday in Brussels, and it is expected they will impose additional sanctions on Iran for its arms exports to Russia. Such sanctions would be in addition to those that it imposed on Monday on Iran for the regime’s violations of human rights, as it has tried to suppress the protests that have followed the Sept. 16 death of a young Kurdish woman, Jinna (Mahsa) Amini, while in the custody of Tehran’s so-called morality police.

As Price noted in the statement he issued on Wednesday, already in July, the US began warning “that Iran was planning to transfer UAVs to Russia for use in Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine.”

Price warned of further sanctions “and other appropriate tools” that the US could use against Iran, if the arms transfers continued. He also pledged to “continue to surge unprecedented security assistance to Ukraine, including air defense capabilities, so that Ukraine can defend itself from these weapons (i.e. Iranian-supplied weapons.)”