Russia has been sending US weapons captured in Ukraine to Iran: sources

Russia has been capturing some of the US and NATO supplied weapons and equipment left on the battlefield in Ukraine and shipping it to Iran.

The US believes Tehran will try to reverse engineer the systems, four sources familiar with the matter told CNN .

In the past year, the US, NATO and other Western authorities have seen several instances of Russian forces seizing shoulder-fired, smaller weapons equipment, including Javelin and Stinger anti-aircraft systems, which Ukrainian forces were sometimes forced to leave behind in the past. battlefield, sources told CNN .

In many of these cases, Russia has sent the equipment to Iran for disassembly and analysis, presumably so the Iranian military can try to make its own version of the weapons.

Russia believes that continuing to supply captured Western weapons to Iran will encourage Tehran to maintain its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, the sources said.

US officials do not believe the problem is widespread or systematic, and the Ukrainian military has made a habit since the start of the war of reporting to the Pentagon any losses of equipment supplied by the US to Russian forces. Still, they acknowledge that the issue is difficult to track.

It is unclear whether Iran has successfully reverse-engineered any US weapons taken from Ukraine, but Tehran has proven to be highly adept at developing weapons systems based on seized US equipment in the past.

A key weapon in Iran’s inventory, the Toophan anti-tank guided missile, was reverted from the American BGM-71 TOW missile in the 1970s.

The Iranians also intercepted a US-made drone in 2011, a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 “Sentinel”, and reverse-engineered a new drone that crossed Israeli airspace in 2018 before being shot down.

“Iran has demonstrated the ability to reverse engineer US weapons in the past,” said Jonathan Lord, senior fellow and director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.

“They reverse-engineered the TOW anti-tank guided missile, creating a near-perfect replica they called the Toophan, and have since proliferated it to the Houthis and Hezbollah. Iran could do the same with a Stinger, which could threaten civil and military aviation across the region.”

“A reverse-engineered Javelin could be used by Hamas or Hezbollah to threaten an Israeli Merkava tank. In the hands of Iran’s proxies, these weapons pose a real threat to Israel’s conventional military forces.”

The coordination is yet another example of Moscow’s growing defense partnership with Tehran, which has intensified over the past year as Russia has become increasingly desperate for external military support for its war against Ukraine.

The partnership is not only further destabilizing Ukraine, but could also threaten Iran’s neighbors in the Middle East, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said last month.

A CNN contacted the Russian embassy in Washington and the Iranian UN mission for comment.

US has warned of threats posed by Iran

Senior US military officials, including Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, were in the Middle East this month for discussions with their counterparts there about the threats posed by Iran, the Pentagon said. .

“Over the past year, Russia’s military cooperation with Iran has deepened, and this poses serious challenges for this region and the security of its citizens,” Austin told a news conference alongside Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. in Tel Aviv on Thursday (9).

“Iran is gaining important battlefield knowledge and experience in Ukraine that will eventually transfer to its dangerous proxies in the Middle East,” Austin said. “In exchange for Iranian support in Ukraine, Russia has offered Iran unprecedented defense cooperation, including in missile and air defense.”