Today, Tuesday, the Ukrainian army announced that it has faced for the first time Iranian drone Russia has used it on the battlefield, demonstrating the depth of relations between Moscow and Tehran at a time when Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers is at stake.
US intelligence warned last July ofn Tehran plans to send hundreds of planes The bomb-laden march to Russia to aid its military operation in Ukraine. Although Iran initially denied this, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards recently boasted that he armed the global superpower.
For its part, a Ukrainian military officer, as well as a pro-Ukrainian website closely linked to the army, has posted images of the wreckage of an Iranian-made Shahed drone.
The military official and the website said Ukrainian forces faced the march near Kobyansk in the midst of the Kiev offensive that broke through Russian lines around Kharkiv on the Eastern Front.
The picture indicates that Ukrainian forces shot down the march without It explodes when it falls, as expected, Although Kiev has announced little other information on the spot. The inscription on the march indicated that it was a “M214 Jeeran-2” model, the image of which does not match any known Russian weapon.
Iran has multiple versions of the “Witness” march used by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.
Interestingly, the “Shahid” march was designed in the shape of a triangle and has a range of around 2,000 km, although Iran has announced limited details in this regard.
Experts point out that these marches carry bombs described as “vagrant ammunition”. The drone flies to a potentially programmed destination before its flight and explodes into the air above the target or on impact.
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Iranian Shahid parade (archive)
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Iran’s rapprochement with Russia comes at a time when Tehran faces overwhelming sanctions due to the collapse of the nuclear deal in 2018 following the US withdrawal from it. It appears that the negotiations for the relaunch of the agreement, which saw restrictions on Iran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for lifting the sanctions, have once again come to a dead end.
Relations between Ukraine and Iran are also strained due to the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in 2020, killing all 176 people on board.
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