Continued assistance to Russia in the form of drones and weapons could put Iran at risk of being seen as a fighting enemy in Ukraine, a status that opens the country to sharing responsibility for war crimes.
“With the potential transfer of missiles from Iran to Ukraine, we need to start seeing the Islamic Republic as a Russian side fighter in the war in Ukraine,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Behnam told Fox News. Ben Taleblu Digitale. “Indeed, if heavily armed Iranian suicide drones are hitting Kiev, there is no longer any room to entertain the pretense that Iran is just a passive partner in this conflict.”
Taleblu’s comments come after numerous reports in the past week have indicated that Iran has increased its assistance to the Russian war effort in Ukraine, including providing Russian forces with suicide drones and surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.
Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps reportedly traveled to Crimea to help train Russian forces on the use of Iranian-made weapons, a move that signals deepening military ties between the two countries.
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Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Russian President Vladimir Putin greet each other as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi stands on the right.
(Iranian Supreme Leader Office via AP)
This fact was confirmed Thursday by White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who said that “the Iranians have decided to transfer some instructors and technical support to help the Russians use them with greater lethality.”
“The information we have is that the Iranians have put instructors and technical support in the Crimea, but the Russians are the pilots,” Kirby told reporters. “This is our assessment at the moment.”
“The aggressive regimes of Tehran and Moscow are increasingly dependent on each other due to the international backlash against their coercive foreign policies and imperial ambitions,” James Phillips, senior researcher for Middle Eastern affairs, told Fox News Digital. at The Heritage Foundation. “Both have been heavily sanctioned as a result and are cooperating to evade sanctions.”
Phillips noted that the two countries also collaborated in Syria, where their armies joined forces to help keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power.
But Iranian cooperation with Russia in Ukraine could be even more problematic for the country, with reports emerging that Iranian-made “kamikaze drones” have been used to hit targets around Kiev, including civilian areas.
The strikes were the most recent example of alleged war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, while the use of Iranian-supplied equipment to carry out the attacks could result in Iran being held at least partially responsible for the crimes.
“If Iranian personnel are launching and controlling drones, or even just keeping them for the Russians, then they should be considered fighters,” Phillips said. “At the very least, they are certainly complicit in Russian war crimes, as the Russians are using drones to target civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
Firefighters help a local woman evacuate from a residential building destroyed in a Russian attack using an Iranian-made drone in Kiev, Ukraine on October 17, 2022.
(Reuters / Vladyslav Musiienko)
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The Russian invasion of Ukraine largely cut the country off from much of the international community, forcing the Kremlin to partner with countries like Iran and North Korea. The inconsistent results on the battlefield have complicated matters for Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the Russian military running out of ammunition stocks in an attempt to regain the initiative against encouraged Ukrainian forces. As a result, Russia has turned to its new partners for help in maintaining the war effort.
“It would make sense to consider Iran a part of the Russia-Ukraine war, considering that the Islamic Republic provides lethal military hardware that helps Moscow kill Ukrainians,” Rebekah Koffler, former DIA intelligence officer and author of “Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America, “he told Fox News Digital. “The same problem can be raised for North Korea, which has supplied millions of artillery shells and rockets to the Russians. Putin has assembled a coalition of international pariahs to help him plug some holes in its conventional weapons arsenal as it runs out of steam. its precision attack missiles. “
Russian President Vladimir Putin
(Pavel Bednyakov, Sputnik, photo of the Kremlin pool via AP)
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Koffler noted that Russia already views the US and NATO as a party to the war, with the American-led alliance providing Ukraine with the lethal weapons it needs to support its defense against invasion. However, a recognition by the West that Iran is a fighter in the war would force the United States to reveal the true extent of the conflict.
“Once Washington recognizes that Iran and North Korea are in fact enemy combatants on the side of the Kremlin, everyone will recognize the obvious: we are in a battle between East and West,” Koffler said. “And the battlefield is expanding beyond geographic boundaries and into cyber, economics and other domains.”
Despite Iran’s participation in the war in Ukraine, the White House continued its efforts to reignite the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal, even as the talks they have recently been blocked and a new deal has become increasingly unlikely.
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“The White House is still under the illusion that it can reach a nuclear deal with Iran and Russia is part of those talks,” Koffler said. “It’s largely the same cast of characters, the Obama 2.0 crew, who were pushing a silly ‘reset’ policy with Russia – when Joe Biden was the vice president – while Putin was devising his plan to subjugate the country again. ‘Ukraine and other post-Soviet states. “
Instead, Koffler argued that President Biden should “maintain a strong deterrent stance and develop a counter strategy”.
Part of that counter-strategy would typically include Saudi Arabia, a longtime security partner whose relations with the United States have deteriorated under Biden’s leadership. That fractured relationship culminated last week when the Saudi-led oil cartel OPEC + decided to cut oil production despite pleas from the White House to increase production to help alleviate an energy crisis in the West.
That move was not well received in Washington, where Biden and several lawmakers accused the oil-rich kingdom of siding with Russia in its war with Ukraine. The charge was denied by Saudi Arabia, which said its motives were purely for the economic benefit of OPEC + member states.
President Joe Biden
(Reuters / Evelyn Hockstein)
However, Biden warned of the “consequences” for Saudi Arabia and promised to review US security relations with the country, a move Phillips questioned amid the administration’s seemingly softer stance towards the country. ‘Iran.
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“Although the Biden administration threatens to punish Saudi Arabia for siding with Russia on oil prices, it has turned a blind eye to Iran’s much broader cooperation with Moscow on oil prices, arms sales, the Ukraine and Syria, “said Phillips. “The administration should focus more on fending off opponents on security issues and less on penalizing troubled friends on political issues such as high gas prices ahead of mid-term elections.”
