Washington provides evidence of “deepening” ties between Iran and Russia
On Thursday, the United States presented United Nations (UN) member states with wreckage and components of Iranian military drones that Washington said it recovered in Ukraine, evidence the Pentagon said of a “deep” relationship between Tehran and Russia.
This is the first time that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has presented the American mission to the United Nations with carcasses, engines and components of military drones from Iran, including the Shahed 101, Shahed 131 and Shahed 136 models, which, according to Washington, was “recovered” from the theater of war in Ukraine.
“These are not replicas, they are real. “Weapons of war that Iran passed on to malicious actors” in violation of the UN Security Council resolution on Iran’s nuclear program, accused American Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “Iranian officials have not hidden their ambition to increase sales of these attack drones (…) We are not afraid to talk about it publicly, but we need your partnership, we need your voices,” she told dozens of ambassadors from Iran to the UN -Member States have been invited to observe these wrecks.
DIA officials showed four journalists the same debris and debris from military suicide drones on Wednesday evening and compared these devices found in Iraq in 2021 and 2022 with others “almost identical” found in Ukraine in 2022. Iran, which is very close to Russia, has been accused by Western countries for months of supplying large quantities of drones, especially explosive ones, to the Russian army to support it in the war in Ukraine, which Tehran denies.
From Syria to Ukraine, the “thriving” military ties between Russia and Iran are worrying the United States, an American military official, General Alexus Grynkewich, said in Abu Dhabi in late September. “The deepening of Russian-Iranian relations is very worrying,” said a DIA analyst in New York, accusing Iran of “lying” about supplying drones for “Russia’s war” in Ukraine.
As previously publicly displayed in Washington in August, this time the DIA exhibited in front of a hundred countries a carcass of “Shahed 131 deployed in Ukraine in the fall of 2022, along with a Shahed 131 found in Iraq in 2021.” “The systems are the same size, have the same shape and were constructed with similar materials and components,” the DIA said.
Further evidence that the two devices are Iranian, according to the Pentagon: their “honeycomb structure” or “honeycomb structure,” which is “almost certainly” Tehran’s trademark, according to another military intelligence analyst.