“Anyone doing business with Iran that could have any link to UAVs, ballistic missile developments, or the flow of arms from Iran to Russia should be very careful and do their due diligence,” said Vedant Patel, a spokesman for the State Department, to reporters. “The US will not hesitate to use sanctions or take actions against perpetrators.”
“The whole world — especially those in the area and around the world, really — should be seeing Russia deepening an alliance with Iran as a significant threat,” he added.
As the nation braces for winter, Ukrainian officials said that the strikes in Kyiv claimed the lives of four people, among them a couple who were expecting a child, and cut off electricity in hundreds of towns and villages.
The drone attacks, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, demonstrated the necessity of giving Ukraine “everything feasible” as its soldiers advance in their battle against Russian invaders in advance of winter.
At Stanford University in California, Blinken told reporters that the Russians are “attacking essential infrastructure like power plants, hospitals, and the things that people require in their everyday lives but are not military objectives.”
When it comes to attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure, Blinken said, “It is an indication of growing desperation by Russia, but it’s also a sign of the lengths to which they would go and that we’ve seen again.”
According to Patel in Washington, the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which approved the now-defunct 2015 nuclear agreement, was breached by Iran’s supply of drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles.
We think that these UAVs, which Russia acquired from Iran and utilised against Ukraine, are among the weapons that would continue to be subject to the 2231 ban.
Despite efforts made at the United Nations by the administration of then-President Donald Trump, who pulled out of the nuclear agreement, the resolution’s restriction on Iranian shipments of conventional weapons expired in October 2020.
However, the resolution keeps a ban on exports of ballistic missiles that may carry nuclear weapons in place until October 2023.
Patel said that some of the Iranian drones being delivered to Russia have malfunctioned, using previously made public US intelligence.
The transfer, in his words, demonstrates the “enormous pressure” being applied to Russia, which the US claims has lost 6,000 pieces of weaponry since invading Ukraine.
He claimed that Moscow was “honestly being compelled to turn to untrustworthy countries like Iran for supply and weapons.”
US officials have previously stated that China has rejected demands for assistance while North Korea is looking to Russia, a historically significant arms exporter.
