Washington provides evidence of ‘deepening’ relationship between Iran and Russia
The United States presented, on Thursday, to United Nations (UN) member states wrecks and components of Iranian military drones that Washington claims to have recovered in Ukraine, evidence according to the Pentagon of a relationship “thorough” between Tehran and Russia.
This is the first time that the military intelligence of the Ministry of Defense (Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA) has exhibited to the American mission to the UN carcasses, engines, components of military drones manufactured by Iran, including the Shahed 101, Shahed 131 and Shahed 136 which Washington says he has “recovered” in the theater of war in Ukraine.
“These are not replicas, they are real. Weapons of war that Iran transferred to malicious actors » in violation of the UN Security Council resolution on Iran’s nuclear program, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield charged. “Iranian officials have not hidden their ambition to expand sales of these attack drones (…) We are not afraid to talk about this in public, but we need your partnership, we need your voices »she said in front of dozens of ambassadors from UN member states invited to observe these wrecks.
DIA officials showed four journalists on Wednesday evening the same debris and wreckage of military suicide drones, comparing these devices found in Iraq in 2021 and 2022 to others “almost identical” found in Ukraine in 2022. Iran, very close to Russia, has been accused for months by Western countries of delivering large quantities of drones, including explosives, to the Russian army to help it in its war in Ukraine, which Tehran denies.
From Syria to Ukraine, military ties “flourishing” between Russia and Iran worries the United States, an American military official, General Alexus Grynkewich, said at the end of September in Abu Dhabi. “The deepening of the Russian-Iranian relationship is very worrying”declared in New York a DIA analyst accusing Iran of ” lie “ about the supply of drones for “the Russian war” in Ukraine.
As it had already done publicly in August in Washington, the DIA this time exhibited in front of a hundred countries a carcass of “Shahed 131 used in Ukraine in the fall of 2022 next to a Shahed 131 found in Iraq in 2021”. “The systems are the same size, have the same shape and were built with similar materials and components”according to the DIA.
Other proof according to the Pentagon that the two devices are Iranian: their “honeycomb structure” Or “honeycomb structure” which, according to another military intelligence analyst, is “almost certainly” the trademark of Tehran.