Russia and Iran working on building joint drone production lines
Iran and Russia have deepened their military alliance and are working on building joint drone production lines, British and US intelligence have warned.
The Ministry of Defence said that the Kremlin was now wholly reliant on Iran to top up its supplies of missiles and drones.
“Iran’s support to the Russian military is likely to grow in the coming months: Russia is attempting to obtain more weapons, including hundreds of ballistic missiles,” it said.
It comes after the US said that Iran is now "Russia's top military backer".
"Russia is seeking to collaborate with Iran in areas like weapons development, training," US national security council spokesman John Kirby said on Friday, adding that the US fears that Russia intended to "provide Iran with advanced military components" including helicopters and air defence systems.
Iranian drones are cheap and have long range
Russia has so far relied on Iranian drones to bolster its dwindling supplies of missiles after nearly nine months of war and has been deploying them to destroy power stations and other civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.
Iranian drones, the Shahed-136 is the most common, are cheap to produce, and have a long range.
Russian technicians have repainted them as Geranium-2 to try to disguise them and Iran has denied supplying Russia but testimonies and reports from Ukraine have confirmed the deals.
Now an unnamed security official has told the Washington Post that Iran had agreed to send 6,000 drones to Russia and “to supply designs as well as technical supervision for the planned Russian drone factory, which is expected to be located in the Tatarstan region”.
Tatarstan lies in central Russia.
Iran to receive Russian fighter jets
On top of this, the source said that Russia would pay Iran $1 billion in addition to “still unknown inducements”.
Iran is also to receive top-of-the-range fighter jets from Russia “within the next year” in exchange. Biden administration officials said on Friday that Iranian pilots were already being trained in Russia on how to fly the Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jet.
Downing Street and the White House warned that the new "sordid deals" amount to a "large scale military partnership" between Tehran and Moscow.
Russia and Iran are under tough Western sanctions and their anti-West positions have deepened. They have worked closely previously, undermining Western strategy to unseat Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad.
Its alliance with Russia also comes at a time when Iran's government is facing internal protests and the British ministry of defence said that in return for its drone expertise and ballistic missiles, Russia is offering the Iranian regime access to its highly-valued defence industry.
“Russia is highly likely offering Iran an unprecedented level of military and technical support that is transforming their defence relatioship,” it said.
