US to sanction Iran over alleged missile shipments

Tehran has denied supplying Moscow with short-range ballistic missiles

The US will impose fresh sanctions on Iran in response to Tehran’s alleged supply of missiles to Moscow, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Tuesday. Iran has dismissed the allegations as “psychological warfare.”

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Blinken claimed that Iran has sent an unknown number of Fath-360 short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. 

“We’ve warned Tehran publicly, we’ve warned Tehran privately, that taking this step would be a dangerous escalation,” he said. “Russia has now received shipments of these missiles, and will likely use them within weeks in Ukraine.”

New sanctions will be announced later on Tuesday, Blinken said. Among the entities targeted will be the Islamic Republic’s national airline, Iran Air, he noted.

News of the missile deliveries was first reported last Friday by the Wall Street Journal. An EU spokesman confirmed the report on Monday, followed by Blinken on Tuesday. 

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Iran categorically denies the accusation. “No missile was sent to Russia and this claim is a kind of psychological warfare,” senior military commander Fazlollah Nozari told Iranian media on Monday. “Iran does not support any of the parties to the Ukraine-Russia conflict,” Nozari added.

“We strongly reject the claims of Iran’s role in exporting arms to one side of the war,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani told reporters later that day. “Iran’s accusers are the ones who are among the biggest arms exporters to one side of the war.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not deny the accusations outright. “We have seen this report; it is not every time that this kind of information is true,” he told RIA Novosti on Monday. 

“Iran is our important partner, we are developing our trade and economic relations… including the most sensitive areas. And we will continue to do this in the interests of the peoples of our two countries,” he added.

The US has imposed sanctions on Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, with Washington’s economic blacklist now including around 5,000 Iranian individuals and entities. Some of these existing sanctions, for example against Iranian aerospace and weapons firms, relate to Tehran’s alleged supply of kamikaze drones to the Russian military.

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As with the ballistic missiles, Tehran denies selling Russia its ‘Shahed’ drones, insisting that only a small batch of the self-destructing UAVs were shipped to Moscow before the Ukraine conflict began. Russia maintains that its ‘Geran-2’ kamikaze drones – which bear a striking similarity to Iran’s ‘Shahed-136’ craft – are domestically produced.

The US has also accused North Korea of supplying Russia with artillery shells, and China of supplying so-called ‘dual use’ components – tools and electronics with civilian and military purposes.