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Iran is preparing to supply Russia with hundreds of drone aircraft, including advanced models capable of firing missiles, the Biden administration said Monday, publicly revealing what US officials say is an effort Tehran’s secret to provide military assistance for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The planned delivery of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, revealed by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at a briefing at the White House, could give a significant boost to Moscow’s efforts to find and destroy Western-supplied artillery and others. weapons systems that have slowed the advance of Russian troops in recent weeks.
Sullivan said Iran is also preparing to train Russians on how to use weapons, and initial training sessions will begin as early as this month.
“Our information indicates that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with up to a few hundred UAVs, including UAVs with weapons on an accelerated schedule,” Sullivan told reporters in the House information room White.
“It’s not clear if Iran has already delivered any of these UAVs to Russia,” Sullivan said, “but this is just one example of how Russia is looking for capabilities in countries like Iran.”
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The revelation comes as President Biden prepares to march on the Middle East, where he is expected to confer with key allies on a unified regional policy toward Iran. Tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated further in recent weeks amid faltering nuclear talks and a resurgence of rocket and drone attacks on US military installations in the Middle East, carried out by armed and Iran-funded militia groups.
While Russia has its own vast arsenal of drones, the arrival of Iranian planes could help Moscow replace a key weapons system that suffered heavy losses during the four-month conflict. Surveillance UAVs play a crucial role in targeting enemy forces by artillery, and armed drones can glide over the battlefield for hours, firing missiles that can destroy tanks and other armored vehicles.
Receiving UAVs is a “significant statement” about the limitations of Russian capabilities, said Frederick Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.
There are several indications that Russian-backed forces are running out of precision weapons, which would change Iran’s UAVs, he added.
“It is difficult to assess what the effect will be, but it will clearly give the Russians more capacity to carry out airstrikes, presumably deeper into Ukrainian territory than they have now,” Kagan said.
Ukraine has used UAVs, many of them supplied by NATO countries such as Turkey, to destroy hundreds of Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers since the start of the invasion. Moscow, which is now diplomatically isolated and under heavy economic sanctions, has struggled to replace some of its lost military equipment, while Ukraine receives billions of dollars worth of weapons, including state-of-the-art artillery systems. United States. States.
“From our perspective, we will continue to do our part to help maintain Ukraine’s effective defense,” Sullivan said, “and to help Ukrainians demonstrate that the Russian effort to try to wipe Ukraine off the map cannot have success”.
Iran has in recent years become a major manufacturer of drones. Among its military models is the Shahed-129, which closely resembles the U.S.-made Predator UAV used in military and counterterrorism operations abroad. Some military experts believe the Shahed-129 is a clone of Predator, a reverse engineering of an American spy plane that crashed in Iran a few years ago.
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Iranian leaders have freely shared UAV systems with outside groups, mostly with pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Drones designed by Iran have been used to attack U.S. and Allied military bases in the Middle East, as well as civilian targets such as oil refineries.
Over the years, Russia has been a key trading partner and occasional military ally of Iran. While Moscow joined the United States and the European Union in supporting the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, it also fought alongside Iran to help defend Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, a key ally for in both countries, during the 11-year civil war in Syria.
Iran’s apparent decision to provide military assistance to Moscow could further undermine efforts to reactivate the nuclear deal. Following President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the deal in 2018, Iran has denied its promise to limit its enriched uranium reserves to levels well below what would be needed to build a nuclear weapon. Since then, Tehran has overcome agreed restrictions and now has enough fissile material to make at least one bomb, if it decides to do so, according to nuclear weapons experts. U.S. intelligence agencies say they have so far seen no evidence that Iran has begun making real weapons.
Some Iranian experts predict that the country may try to disrupt Biden’s upcoming visit to the Middle East by authorizing its proxy groups to commit a provocation, such as a missile attack on a U.S. military facility.
“An attack during the summit could have several benefits for Tehran,” Michael Eisenstadt, director of the Washington Institute’s Military and Security Studies program for Middle East policy, wrote in an essay published Monday in the group website. Among the possible benefits: “humiliating American officials and their Saudi hosts [and] proving that Washington cannot protect its friends even while the president is visiting, ”he wrote.
Praveena Somasundaram contributed to this report.