‘Actively Neutral’ Iran Faces Fresh Drone Allegations From Ukraine
Tehran this week denied reports about supplying military drones to Russia, while the Kyiv region was targeted apparently by several Iranian-made drones.
Tehran this week denied reports about supplying military drones to Russia, while the Kyiv region was targeted apparently by several Iranian-made drones.
Oleksiy Kuleba, head of the Kyiv military administration, said that six explosions 75km south of the city early Wednesday, wounding one in a military base at Bila Tserkva, had been carried out by Iranian-made Shahed 136 delta-wing ‘kamikaze’ drones.
Air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat told Ukrainian television the drones had been launched from Russian-held territory to the south, with six others shot down. In remarks widely picked up by international media, Ihnat called the threat signaled by the attack “serious,” while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly discussed with commanders the “new types of weapons that the aggressor has begun to use.” Ukrainian officials earlier suggested the drones offer Moscow an easily-assembled, cheap alternative to high-precision missiles.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani had said October 3 that media reports were “baseless” and that Tehran was committed to “active neutrality and opposition to war and the need for a political settlement of the differences between the two sides and away from violence.”
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in July warned Iran had agreed to supply drones to Russia after a visit by commanders to an Iranian air base, although US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said July 29 there were still “no signs of purchase.” Subsequent claims by US officials over Iran supplying drones have been anonymous.
Bombs, lobbyists, and air defenses
Ukraine has lobbied heavily in Washington, including recently sending a troop of female soldiers, and now argues that Russia’s use of Iranian drones justifies the US supplying more advanced weapons, a call echoed by some advocates of Ukraine and commentators.
Despite the Iranian foreign ministry’s insistence that Tehran is neutral in the conflict, its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised Vladimir Putin for his “initiative” of invading Ukraine, during their meeting in Tehran on July 19. Iran has long been a “strategic ally” of Russia, having supplied the ground troops in Syria to save President Bashar Assad’s government in the civil war.
Without an effective air-force due to decades of sanctions, Iran has developed domestic drone production, beginning with surveillance in the 1980-88 war with Iraq and progressing into carrying munitions. Some analysts argue Russia’s own development of drones has been hampered by air-force commanders’ preference for piloted airplanes.
Regional leaders in drone production are Israel and Turkey. Ankara has supplied Ukraine since 2019 with the advanced Bayraktar TB-2 while also acting in the current conflict as the main mediator between Moscow and Kiev. Despite being a top-ten global arms exporter and a leader in UAVs, kamikaze drones and precision-guided missiles, Israel has been criticized by Ukraine for not supplying weapons.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in September he was “in shock because I don’t understand why they couldn’t give us air defenses.” Politicians of various hues in Israel, where around 15 percent of voters are Russian-speakers, are loath to undermine good relations with Moscow.
The 16-year-old Nika Shakarami’s body was found ten days after she left home to take part in an anti-government protest on September 20. The last time she spoke to anyone she was running away from security forces chasing her on motorbikes.
Activists had warned Wednesday on social media that Nika’s family were under pressure to say she had committed suicide. Later in the evening, the state-run television’s infamous 8:30 news bulletin aired short excerpt of so-called “confessions” of Nika’s uncle and aunt as proof that she had committed suicide and security forces had no role in her death as many in Iran say.
Nika’s aunt and uncle were arrested a few days ago after publicizing her suspicious death on social media.
The program has aired forced ‘confessions’ of imprisoned activists, politicians, and social media celebrities many times, often using such ‘confessions’ as proof that dissent in Iran is only the result of foreign plots as the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei says in almost every public speech.
Many on social media have accused the IRIB program of pushing a script written by security forces and pointed out various discrepancies in the story as it was told by the authorities.
They have pointed out that Nika was wearing dark trainers in a photo released by the authorities of her body on the ground in the backyard of a house after “falling from a height”.
In CCTV footage shown in the same program the woman they say is Nika entering the same building a few hours before her death is wearing white trainers. The program shows a man, apparently an interrogator, who indicates the woman entering the building on a laptop screen with his finger and asking who she is. “Nika,” the clearly distressed aunt, Atash Shakarami, replies without further comment.
The program also shows Nika’s uncle, Mohsen Shakarami, saying the family would follow the case through legal channels and did not approve of any “violent moves that cause damage to public property.”
Social media users have pointed out that in the video shown by IRIB the shadow of a man is seen on the wall behind Nika’s uncle while he is speaking, whispering something to him, apparently instructing him what to say.
On Thursday the official news agency (IRNA) released a video showing two French citizens, Cecile Kohler and her partner Jacque Paris, who were arrested in May on charges of espionage. IRNA called the French couple who are unionists associated with France’s National Federation of Education, Culture and Vocational Training “intelligence officers who came to Iran with bags of money”. The IRNA report did not say when the video was made.
In one of the scenes in the video Kohler describes herself as an “intelligence and operation agent of French foreign security service” saying she and her partner had come to Iran to fund strikes and antigovernment protests.
In reaction to forced confessions of its citizens, France's Foreign Ministry accused Iran Thursday of the practices of "worst dictatorial regimes". The ministry categorically denied that its citizens were intelligence agents, saying it will do its utmost to secure their release.
In a tweet Thursday Abdollah Ganji, the former editor of the IRGC-linked Javan newspaper who is now chief editor of Tehran municipality’s Hamshahri newspaper, claimed that Nika’s death was not related to the protests and merely a “coincidence” which protesters are using as a “spare fuel tank for the riots”.
A political analyst who asked not to be named, told Iran International, “What matters in this case, irrespective of who is telling the truth, is that nobody is convinced by what the authorities say because nobody trusts the system. People will believe the exact opposite of what the government says,” and added “Even the authorities know that everything is collapsing.”