Insisting that the transfer took place before Moscow’s war on Ukraine, which resulted in the Iranian-made drones dive-bombing Kyiv, Iran’s foreign minister acknowledged on Saturday that his country has supplied Russia with drones for the first time.
The remarks by Hossein Amirabdollahian, the foreign minister of Iran, follow months of conflicting information from Iran over the transfer of weapons, as Russia sends drones slamming into Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilian targets.
“We gave a limited number of drones to Russia months before the Ukraine war,” Amirabdollahian told reporters after a meeting in Tehran.
Iranian officials had previously denied arming Russia during its conflict with Ukraine. Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, repeated Iran’s position of neutrality in the conflict earlier this week and called the accusations “absolutely false.”
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been urged by the United States and its Western allies on the Security Council to look into whether Russia used Iranian drones to target people in Ukraine.
However, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has made oblique claims that it has given drones to the world’s most powerful nations. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, has praised the drones’ effectiveness and ridiculed Western concerns about their risk.
Crowds carried signs depicting the triangle-shaped drones as a source of national pride during state-sponsored protests on Friday to commemorate the 1979 U.S. Embassy seizure.
Amirabdollahian asserted on Saturday that Iran was unaware of the usage of its drones in Ukraine even as he acknowledged the supply. He declared that Iran was still committed to ending the crisis.
“If (Ukraine) has any documents in their possession that Russia used Iranian drones in Ukraine, they should provide them to us,” he said. “If it is proven to us that Russia used Iranian drones in the war against Ukraine, we will not be indifferent to this issue.”
