Drone Production Facility: How Iran Deepened Its Military Partnership With Russia

A British newspaper recently revealed that the Iranian regime smuggled a batch of drones to Russia by land and sea.

The newspaper considered that this disclosure proves increasing Russian-Iranian efforts to deepen their military partnership and defense cooperation since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine a year ago, with the aim of confronting US and Western pressures.

Meanwhile, as Russia denies using Iranian equipment, it has relied largely on drones from Tehran as it consumes its stockpiles of missiles to launch attacks on Ukraine.

Over the past months, Moscow and Tehran have agreed to set up a drone production facility inside Russia, which Western officials believe will allow Moscow to replenish supplies more quickly.

Kyiv and its Western allies accuse Russia of using Iranian-made drones to attack Ukrainian targets, most notably energy facilities; while Iran has repeatedly denied sending weapons to any party for use in the war, it admitted for the first time in September 2022 that it had provided Moscow with such drones before the start of the war on February 24, 2022.

 

Iranian Support

Iran used boats and a state-owned airline to smuggle new, advanced types of suicide drones to Russia to be used in its war on Ukraine, Iranian sources revealed to the Guardian on February 12, 2023.

There was no Iranian denial of what was reported by the British newspaper, but Tehran denies continuing to help Russia in Ukraine, although it had previously admitted to providing Moscow with a limited number of drones months before the invasion.

The newspaper quoted informed sources as saying that most of the drones sent to Russia were secretly carried by an Iranian ship from a base overlooking the coast of the Caspian Sea and then transferred at sea to a Russian navy boat.

The sources added that other drones were sent on board a flight of an Iranian state-owned airline.

The sources revealed that these smuggled drones were produced in the military factory in the center of Isfahan, which was targeted on January 28.

The newspaper pointed out that it is believed that the last delivery of a drone that entered service over Ukraine took place on November 20, 2022, and that it was expected to smuggle more from Iran to Russia, but the strike that targeted the factory caused great damage.

The Isfahan operation came within the framework of the West exerting more pressure on Iran, using sanctions and warnings about the nuclear file and supporting internal protests.

The Western powers now find that the threat of the Iranian regime is reaching its borders through the support it provides to Moscow, confirming the importance of imposing more pressure to contain these threats.

Iran also sent technicians to Moscow to help operate the drones, according to the sources, who stated that three officials for each drone, 54 officials in total, helped integrate the smuggled drones into the Russian army.

The newspaper indicated that no less than 18 drones were handed over to the Russian Navy after Russian officers and technicians made a special visit in November 2022 to Tehran, where they were shown a full range of Iranian technologies.

During the aforementioned visit, the Russian delegation, consisting of 10 members, chose 6 Muhajir-6 drones, with a range of about 200 km, carrying two missiles under each wing, in addition to 12 Shahed 191 and Shahed 129 drones, which have the ability to launch air strikes.

Unlike the Shahed 131 and Shahed 136, which Russia has used extensively to carry out suicide bombings against Ukrainian targets, the higher-flying drones are designed to drop bombs and return to their bases safely.

In August 2022, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan revealed Russia’s intention to purchase hundreds of Iranian armed drones for use in the Ukrainian war.

In September 2022, Ukraine announced that it had managed, for the first time, to shoot down an Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone in the Kharkiv region, which was being used by Russian forces.

Meanwhile, Iranian Shahed 136 drones killed civilians in Kyiv in a Russian attack in October 2022, and the Ukrainian Air Force said it shot down 45 drones after a mass attack timed to coincide with the beginning of 2023.

According to reports, Russia has used more than 400 Iranian-made attack drones against Ukraine since August 2022, many of them targeting civilian infrastructure sites such as power plants.

On the other hand, the Ukrainian Air Force revealed that it had shot down more than 540 drones of this type since they began to appear over the country’s skies last fall.

 

Military Cooperation

A new investigation by CNN revealed that Iran has modified the attack drones it provides to Russia in order to inflict significant damage when it attacks targets in Ukraine’s infrastructure.

Last month, the UK-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR), as well as the Ukrainian military, conducted an examination on an unexploded warhead of an Iranian Shahed-131 drone found in the Odesa region of southern Ukraine in October 2022.

The organization’s analysts believed that the warheads were hastily modified with poorly prepared layers of dozens of tiny metal fragments, which, upon impact, scatter across a large radius.

In addition to the fragments, there are 18 smaller charges around the perimeter of the warhead, which, when melted by the explosion, can penetrate the armor. These elements essentially increase the warhead’s ability to destroy targets.

Iran’s promotion of the destructive capabilities of its drones has become the talk of the Western press again, while US officials believe that Iran has turned into a global superpower in the field of drones, as reported by the Guardian on February 14, 2022.

Analysts at the CIA said that Iran has transformed from a regional player in the field of drones in the Middle East into Russia’s most important military supporter in its military operation in Ukraine, and has emerged as a global leader in producing effective drones at an affordable price.

The newspaper quoted an Iranian official who told Al-Monitor website that 90 countries are lining up to buy Iranian drones, noting that China is considering buying 15,000 Iranian drones.

Last month, the Institute for the Study of War found that Russian forces have become increasingly dependent on Iranian drones in their campaign against critical Ukrainian infrastructure.

Russia’s shift and its increased military cooperation with Iran comes because it suffers from a shortage of missiles and to maintain the intensity of attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities.

In addition, Russia is keen to obtain more advanced drones from Iran since Ukraine has an increasing ability to stop smaller suicide drones that have to fly low before launching a missile strike.

In turn, political analyst Ibrahim Khatib explained in a statement to Al-Estiklal that the Iranian-Russian relations went beyond being fleeting partnerships to being a dangerous expansionist alliance.

He noted that Moscow’s alliance with Tehran will require Russia to provide cover for Iran’s expansionist efforts, pointing to the possibility of Moscow using its veto to spare Tehran any UN resolutions that do not serve it.

Speaking of the danger of the Iranian drones, the analyst emphasized that they constitute a great threat to the international community and world peace.

“Iran, with its nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and drones, has become a threat to the entire world,” Mr. Khatib added.

 

Drone Production Facility

In this regard, Western media recently announced the inauguration of a facility for the production of thousands of drones on Russian territory.

According to what the Wall Street Journal reported on Western officials on February 5, 2023, this factory will be able to produce 6,000 Iranian drones in Russia.

The American newspaper considered this the latest sign of deepening cooperation between Iran and Russia, while officials considered that the new factory to be built in Russia is part of the emerging military alliance between Tehran and Moscow.

The officials noted that a high-ranking Iranian delegation traveled to Russia in early January 2023 to visit the site where the factory is planned to be built and to work out details of how the project will start and operate.

The officials added that the new drone factory is part of a billion-dollar deal between Russia and Iran, noting that Moscow provided Tehran with weapons captured on the battlefield in Ukraine.

US officials told the Wall Street Journal that Tehran has already provided Moscow with hundreds of drones, which it used to strike military and civilian targets in Ukraine.

On December 9, 2022, the White House sounded the alarm about the burgeoning military partnership between Iran and Russia, saying that the United States will work to expose and disrupt the exchange of weapons and information between the two countries.

The Biden administration warned that Russia and Iran are developing a full defense partnership, noting that Moscow was training Iranian pilots to fly Russian fighter jets with the intention of sending those jets to Tehran as soon as possible.

It also warned that Moscow and Tehran are studying whether to build a joint production line for drones in Russia.

But Western officials indicated that the talks were turned into concrete plans by the visit of the Iranian delegation on January 5 to the Russian town of Yelabuga, located about 600 miles east of Moscow.

The officials added that the Iranian delegation toured the site where the leaders of the two countries plan to build a new factory that can produce at least 6,000 drones in the coming years.

Officials told the newspaper that “the Iranian delegation was led by Brigadier General Abdollah Mehrabi, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Forces Research, and Ghassem Damavandian, the head of Iran’s Quds Aviation Industry, a defense manufacturing company that the United States says is a cornerstone in the development and manufacture of Iranian drones.”

These statements were not the first of their kind, as the Washington Post previously revealed, on November 19, 2022, intelligence information stating that Moscow had secretly reached an agreement with Tehran to start manufacturing hundreds of drones on Russian soil.

Three officials familiar with the details of the agreement said at the time that by obtaining its own line for assembling drones, Russia would be able to significantly increase its stockpile of highly destructive and relatively inexpensive weapons, which changed the nature of the Ukrainian conflict in the recent period.

In return, the agreement will provide significant economic and political benefits to Iran, which has sought to portray itself as neutral in the Ukrainian conflict, according to officials quoted by the newspaper.

The newspaper also revealed that Russia previously provided Iran with a surveillance satellite to allow it to spy on its neighbors, in addition to key components of the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Western media have also reported that Iran may be seeking additional nuclear assistance in return for its efforts in the Russian military campaign.