Iran has confirmed that it is sending ballistic missiles to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine in exchange for soybeans and wheat.
Despite official Iranian denials, an MP admitted to the deal less than 48 hours after US officials warned of the missile shipments and deepening Russia-Iran military ties.
“We circumvent sanctions through our partnership with Russia. We import soybeans, corn, and other goods from Russia,” said Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, an Iranian MP and a member of the country’s Security and Foreign Policy Committee.
Iran is under heavy Western sanctions that limit its access to hard currencies, forcing it to barter goods for food and fuel.
Analysts have said that the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 accelerated a new anti-West axis with Russia and Iran at its core, a concept that Mr Ardestani appeared to confirm.
“We give missiles to Hezbollah, Hamas, and Hashd al-Shaabi, so why not to Russia?” he told Iranian media. “Europeans sell arms to Ukraine. Nato has entered Ukraine, so why shouldn’t we support our ally by sending missiles and drones to Russia?”
US intelligence officials have also confirmed that Iran has sent 200 ballistic missiles to Russia. These have since been identified as Fath-360 missiles, fired from manoeuvrable trucks and comparable to US-built Himars.
Iran has been supplying drones to Russia for two years, but Bill Burns, the CIA director, said on Saturday at an event in London that Iranian missile supplies to Russia would mark a “dramatic escalation” in Iran-Russia military relations.
“It is a two-way street,” he said. “Russia is able to do a number of things to help Iran’s ballistic missiles, to make them more dangerous to use against our friends and partners across the Middle East.”
Speaking at the same event as Mr Burns, Sir Richard Moore, the head of MI6, said Iran had chosen to become an active participant in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“If stuff comes on the battlefield, it will become very obvious, very quickly,” he said. “It explodes, it kills Ukrainian civilians, it destroys their infrastructure.”
When the US sent Ukraine Himars in 2022, they were credited with helping to turn the momentum of the war, striking Russian command centres and logistics hubs behind the frontline and forcing the Russian army to retreat.
On paper at least, the largely untested Fath-360, which was only unveiled in 2022, looks to be an even more potent weapon.
It has a top speed of Mach 4, compared to a top speed of missiles fired by Himars of Mach 2.5. Fath-360 missiles also carry a payload of 330 pounds, roughly double the Himars missiles. Although they are not considered quite as accurate, analysts said that Fath-360 missiles are less prone to having their guidance system interfered with, a process known as “spoofing”.
Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the delivery of Fath-360 missiles to Russia showed Tehran’s increasingly important role as an arms supplier to the Kremlin.
“Delivery of shorter-range missiles like Fath-360 will open the way for eventual delivery of longer-range missiles,” he said.
Analysts said that the Fath-360 missiles would be particularly devastating across the long Donbas front line, where the Kremlin has continued to concentrate its attacks despite a Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s southern Kursk region.
On Sunday, Russia’s defence ministry reported that its forces had captured another village just three miles from the outskirts of Pokrovsk, a town that had a pre-war population of 60,000 and sits on important road and rail junctions.
Source Agencies
