Iran Admits Sending Drones to Russia for the First Time

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian on Saturday made the first public admission that Iran has been sending combat drones to Russia. Iranian officials have previously denied the shipments, even as international journalists photographed Iranian suicide drones slamming into targets in Ukraine.

“This fuss made by some Western countries that Iran has provided missiles and drones to Russia to help the war in Ukraine – the missile part is completely wrong. The drone part is true, and we provided Russia a small number of drones months before the Ukraine war,” Amirabdollahian said at a press conference in Tehran.

The Iranian foreign minister claimed his government had no idea Russia was using its drones to strike Ukrainian targets.

“If [Ukraine] has any documents in their possession that Russia used Iranian drones in Ukraine, they should provide them to us. If it is proven to us that Russia used Iranian drones in the war against Ukraine, we will not be indifferent to this issue,” he said.

Amirabdollahian was among the numerous Iranian officials who previously insisted “Iran has not provided any weapons to Russia for the war in Ukraine.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to Amirabdollahian’s statement with derision, claiming that his forces are shooting down ten Iranian drones a day.

“If Iran continues to lie about the obvious, it means the world will make even more efforts to investigate the terrorist cooperation between the Russian and Iranian regimes and what Russia pays Iran for such cooperation,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian president’s response was seconded by U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley, who dismissed Abirabdollahian’s statement as “not true.”

“Iran didn’t give a limited number of drones before the war,” Malley said. “They transferred dozens just this summer, and have military personnel in occupied Ukraine helping Russia use them against Ukrainian civilians.”

“Confronted with evidence, they need a new policy, not a new story,” he said.

Foreign reporters produced photographic evidence of Iranian Shahed-136 kamikaze drones attacking Kyiv in mid-October, followed by Ukrainian officials displaying debris from Ukrainian UAVs at press conferences. France, Germany, and the U.K. called for a United Nations investigation into Russia’s use of Iranian drones in the last week of October.

The UK Guardian placed Amirabdollahian’s limited admission of culpability into the context of a larger power struggle in Tehran, where some feel the regime grew too close to the Russians and underestimated the geopolitical fallout from directly assisting the invasion of Ukraine.

Editor Masih Mohajeri of the influential Tehran newspaper Jomhouri-e-Islami directly addressed Amirabdollahian in a front page editorial on Monday: “Why did you not announce to Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine that it has no right to use Iranian drones in the war in Ukraine? Furthermore, why have you not openly condemned Russia for starting the war and why have you not made a redoubled effort to mediate between the two sides to end this evil war?”

Mohajeri thought Amirabdollahian coming clean about the drones, even in such a limited and devious fashion, was a “good omen” that the regime might be willing to “change policy on the war in Ukraine.”

“You should not put all your eggs in the Russian basket. This method contradicts the policy of ‘neither east nor west’ which is the core of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he lectured in his editorial.

Other Iranian critics of the drone shipments to Russia worried that international backlash could isolate Iran even further, when the regime already faces worldwide condemnation over the killing of Mahsa Amini by its “morality police” and its violent attempts to suppress ongoing protests against the theocracy’s treatment of women.