It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
US asks Iran to be 'pragmatic' as optimism rises on nuclear talks
Issued on: 10/04/2021
The Vienna hotel where diplomats held talks over the Iran nuclear deal is seen in February 2016 JOE KLAMAR AFP/File
Washington (AFP)
The United States said Friday it offered "very serious" ideas on reviving the Iran nuclear accord but was waiting for Tehran to reciprocate as partner nations voiced optimism following talks in Vienna.
President Joe Biden's administration has opened indirect diplomacy with Iran in hopes of returning to the 2015 agreement, which his predecessor Donald Trump trashed as he launched a "maximum pressure" campaign in hopes of bringing Tehran to its knees.
"The United States team put forward a very serious idea and demonstrated a seriousness of purpose on coming back into compliance if Iran comes back into compliance," a US official told reporters as talks broke for the weekend.
But the official said the United States was waiting for its efforts to be "reciprocated" by Iran.
"We saw some signs of it but certainly not enough. There's still question marks about whether Iran has the willingness to... take the pragmatic approach that the United States has taken to come back into compliance with its obligations under the deal," he said.
Biden argues that the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated under former president Barack Obama had been successful, with UN inspectors saying Iran was meeting its promises to scale back nuclear work dramatically.
Iran has demanded that the United States first lift all sanctions imposed by Trump, which include a sweeping unilateral ban on its oil exports, before it falls back in line with obligations it suspended.
The "US —- which caused this crisis —- should return to full compliance first," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter, adding that "Iran will reciprocate following rapid verification."
The head of Iran's delegation to the talks Abbas Araghchi stressed the need for "political will and seriousness from other parties".
"Otherwise, there will be no reason to continue negotiations," he said, according to a statement from the Iranian foreign ministry. - Stumbling block over sanctions -
The US official indicated that the major stumbling block in the initial talks was not the order of compliance but rather which sanctions were under discussion as Iran is demanding an end to all US restrictions.
The deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, covers only nuclear sanctions and not US measures taken in response to human rights or other concerns, the official said.
"All sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA and are inconsistent with the benefits that Iran expects from the JCPOA we are prepared to lift. That doesn't mean all of them because there are some that are legitimate sanctions," he said.
While Biden can lift sanctions, his diplomacy has already faced heated attacks from Trump's Republican Party, some of whose members have called in the past for attacking Iran.
Iran refused to meet directly with US negotiator Rob Malley during the talks led by the European Union, whose envoys shuttled between the two sides in different hotels.
Talks are set to resume Wednesday with Iran again meeting the other nations in the deal -- Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia as well as the European Union.
The EU diplomat leading the talks, Enrique Mora, said that the meetings had been "constructive and results oriented."
Moscow's ambassador to the UN in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov also said that the participants "noted with satisfaction the initial progress made" and wanted to "maintain the positive momentum."
In another sign of easing tensions, Iran released a South Korean-flagged tanker that it had seized amid a dispute over billions of dollars in frozen oil funds, the foreign ministry in Seoul said.
Due to Trump's sanctions, South Korea had blocked $7 billion it owed Iran for past oil sales but it recently said it had resolved the dispute, subject to US approval.
US officials said they were not involved in the tanker's release and that the issue was not linked to the talks in Vienna.
Talks to discuss US return to Iran nuclear deal 'on right track', says Russia Diplomatic efforts with America will be intensified when talks resume next week in Vienna
Updated: April 4, 2021
World powers will resume talks on the Iran nuclear deal in Vienna this week with mediators set to hold "separate contacts" with the United States.
Diplomatic efforts around the US's potential return to the pact will intensify alongside Tuesday's talks in the Austrian capital, the European Union said, after initial online discussions on Friday.
The talks between representatives of the EU, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran came as US President Joe Biden's administration looks to engage Tehran in negotiations over both sides resuming compliance with the deal.
Talks may be off to a difficult start. On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh reiterated the regime's maximalist position, saying that Tehran was opposed to any gradual easing of sanctions.
"No step-by-step plan is being considered," Mr Khatibzadeh told Press TV. "The definitive policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is the lifting of all US sanctions."
The aim of the talks in the Austrian capital is to reach an agreement within two months, according to a senior official with the EU, the co-ordinator of the negotiations.
An EU statement said that powers at Friday's meeting “recognised the prospect of a full return of the US" to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name of the 2015 nuclear deal.
They also “underlined their readiness to positively address this in a joint effort” and “emphasised their commitment to preserve the JCPOA”.
“Participants agreed to resume this session of the Joint Commission in Vienna next week, in order to clearly identify sanctions lifting and nuclear implementation measures, including through convening meetings of the relevant expert groups,” it said.
“In this context, the co-ordinator will also intensify separate contacts in Vienna with all JCPOA participants and the US.”
Cautious optimism
The US confirmed it would take part in the diplomatic efforts and offered to sit down with Iran.
"These remain early days and we don't anticipate an immediate breakthrough as there will be difficult discussions ahead. But we believe this is a healthy step forward," US State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
The US special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, welcomed negotiations and called them a step "in the right direction".
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said that talks were “on the right track”.
"Discussions were quite businesslike and will continue," he said.
"The impression is that we are on the right track but the way ahead will not be easy and will require intensive efforts. The stakeholders seem to be ready for that."
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the aim of next week’s meeting was to “rapidly finalise sanction-lifting”, which he said would be followed by “Iran ceasing remedial measures”.
Mr Zarif said there would be no meeting between Iran and the US, calling it “unnecessary”. Iran’s deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, a senior negotiator, told Iranian TV that Friday’s talks were “frank and serious”.
IR-8 centrifuges at Natanz nuclear power plant, some 300 kilometres south of capital Tehran. AFP
"Iran will suspend its steps [scaling back compliance with deal terms] as soon as sanctions are lifted and this is verified," Mr Araghchi told the meeting.
Germany’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the continuation of talks in Vienna, saying it had “worked intensively” with Britain and France towards preserving the deal.
“We have no time to lose. An agreement that is once again fully respected would be a plus for the whole region’s security and the best foundation for discussions about other important questions on regional stability,” a German statement said.
China on Friday called for the US to lift all "illegal sanctions" on Iran, saying the country’s nuclear issue was at a “critical stage”.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying blamed Washington’s unilateral exit from the deal as the “root cause” of the problem, and said China welcomed the return of the US.
Under the 2015 agreement, economic sanctions on Iran were lifted in return for curbs on Iran's nuclear programme.
Friday’s talks were chaired by EU official Enrique Mora, the political director of the bloc’s External Action Service, on behalf of the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell.
French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll said European powers were working closely with Russia and China to find a solution to the deadlock.
"These exchanges are more than necessary because Iran has not accepted taking part in direct contacts between the other participants and the US ... which would have eased discussions," she said.
‘First step:’ US, Iran to begin indirect nuclear-limit talks
BY ELLEN KNICKMEYER AND RAF CASERT ASSOCIATED PRESS APRIL 02, 2021
This combined photo released by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, shows Iranian diplomats attending a virtual talk on nuclear deal with representatives of world powers, in Tehran, Iran, Friday, April 2, 2021. The chair of the group including the European Union, China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and Iran said that the participants "emphasized their commitment to preserve the JCPOA and discussed modalities to ensure the return to its full and effective implementation," according to a statement after their virtual meeting, referring to the acronym for the accord — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Abbas Araghchi, center, heads the Iranian diplomats. (Iranian Foreign Ministry via AP)AP
The United States and Iran said Friday they will begin indirect negotiations with intermediaries next week to try to get both countries back into compliance with an accord limiting Iran’s nuclear program, nearly three years after President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal.
The announcement marks one of the first bits of tangible progress in efforts to return both nations to terms of the 2015 accord, which bound Iran to restrictions in return for relief from U.S. and international sanctions.
President Joe Biden came into office saying that getting back into the accord and getting Iran’s nuclear program back under international restrictions was a priority. But Iran and the United States have disagreed over Iran's demands that sanctions be lifted first, and that deadlock has threatened to become an early foreign policy setback for the new U.S. president.
Administration officials played down expectations for next week's talks. State Department spokesperson Ned Price called the resumption of negotiations, scheduled for Tuesday in Vienna, “a healthy step forward.” But Price added, “These remain early days, and we don’t anticipate an immediate breakthrough as there will be difficult discussions ahead.”
“This is a first step,” Biden Iran envoy Rob Malley tweeted. He said diplomats were now “on the right path.”
Trump pulled the U.S. out of the accord in 2018, accusing Iran of continuous cheating and opting for what he called a maximum-pressure campaign of stepped-up U.S. sanctions and other tough actions. Iran responded by intensifying its enrichment of uranium and building of centrifuges in plain violation of the accord, while maintaining its insistence that its nuclear development was for civilian and not military purposes.
Israel, Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies and strategic partners are on perpetual alert against the possibility of their top rival, Iran, attaining nuclear arms, keeping tensions up in a region where the U.S. military is present and has often intervened.
Iran's enrichment was seen as upping the pressure for a U.S. return to the nuclear deal and a lifting of Trump's sanctions, which included banking measures aimed at cutting off the country from the international financial system. Other Trump administration measures sanctioned Iran's oil sales and blacklisted top government officials.
Agreement on the start of indirect talks came after the European Union helped broker a virtual meeting of officials from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran, all of which have remained in the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Price said next week's talks will be structured around working groups that the European Union was forming with the remaining participants in the accord, including Iran.
“The primary issues that will be discussed are the nuclear steps that Iran would need to take in order to return to compliance with the terms of the JCPOA, and the sanctions relief steps that the United States would need to take in order to return to compliance as well,” Price said.
The United States, like Iran, said it did not anticipate direct talks between the two nations now. Price said the United States remains open to that idea, however.
In a tweet, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said the aim of the Vienna session would be to “rapidly finalize sanction-lifting & nuclear measures for choreographed removal of all sanctions, followed by Iran ceasing remedial measures.”
Iranian state television quoted Abbas Araghchi, Iran's nuclear negotiator at the virtual meeting, as saying during Friday's discussions that any “return by the U.S. to the nuclear deal does not require any negotiation and the path is quite clear.”
“The U.S. can return to the deal and stop breaching the law in the same way it withdrew from the deal and imposed illegal sanctions on Iran,” Araghchi was quoted as as saying.
Russia's ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, said "the impression is that we are on the right track, but the way ahead will not be easy and will require intensive efforts. The stakeholders seem to be ready for that.” Events since Trump pulled out of the deal complicate the United States' return.
Iran since the U.S. withdrawal from the pact has been steadily violating its restrictions, like the amount of enriched uranium it can stockpile and the purity to which it can enrich it.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that over the past two years, Iran has accumulated extensive nuclear material and new capacities and used the time for “honing their skills in these areas.”
Iran in January increased uranium enrichment at its underground Fordo facility to 20% levels. That puts Tehran a comparatively easier technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Iran now has enough low-enriched uranium to convert to a higher level of enrichment and make a bomb. Iran insists it is not seeking to make nuclear bombs.
Iran has said that before it resumes compliance with the deal, the U.S. needs to return to its own obligations by dropping the sanctions.
As part of its ongoing violations of the deal, Iran last month began restricting inspections of its nuclear facilities. Under a last-minute agreement worked out during a trip to Tehran, however, some access was preserved.
Under that temporary agreement, Iran will no longer share surveillance footage of its facilities with the International Atomic Energy Agency but has promised to preserve the tapes for three months. It will then hand them over to the Vienna-based U.N. atomic watchdog if it is granted sanctions relief. Otherwise, Iran has vowed to erase the tapes, narrowing the window for a diplomatic breakthrough.
In the U.S., conservatives have pushed the Biden administration to broaden talks to address other complaints against Iran, including its crucial support to armed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Syria and its detention of American citizens, as a condition for lifting sanctions. The administration has pledged in principle to push Iran on those matters, but State Department spokespeople on Friday declined to say if or when those additional points of friction might be raised in resumed talks..
FILE—In this Dec. 23, 2019 file photo released by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, technicians work at the Arak heavy water reactor's secondary circuit, as officials and media visit the site, near Arak, 150 miles (250 kilometers) southwest of the capital Tehran, Iran.
In a statement after a virtual meeting on Friday, April 2, 2021, the chair of a group of high-level officials from the European Union, China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and Iran said the participants "emphasized their commitment to preserve the JCPOA and discussed modalities to ensure the return to its full and effective implementation." (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP, File) AP
Thursday, May 09, 2024
Iran’s new nuclear policy between deterrence and pragmatism
The recent escalation in tensions between Israel and Iran has sparked concerns about a potential shift in Tehran’s strategy toward full weaponization of its nuclear program. On April 14, in retaliation for an Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria on April 1 that killed seven Iranians, including Quds Force Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, Iran launched over 300 drones and ballistic missiles against Israel, in its first ever direct attack on the country. Given Israel's reportedly sizable, undeclared nuclear arsenal, analysts haveinterpreted this move as a sign that Iran intends on becoming a declared nuclear power.
From strategic patience to active deterrence
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) defines the threshold for creating an atomic bomb as approximately 42 kg of uranium enriched up to a purity of 60%. The latest IAEA report indicates that Iran possesses 121 kg of uranium enriched to this level — enough for nearly three bombs. Despite Iran's claim that it is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons, it remains the only country enriching uranium at this level without a confirmed nuclear weapons program. Maintaining its status as a threshold nuclear power is likely to be Iran's chosen strategy under the current circumstances. This is in line with the country’s new proactive and preemptive grand strategy, as compared to its previous approach of strategic patience.
While Iran previously refrained from directly retaliating against Israel for its alleged covert operations, including assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and operatives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), it has decided to adopt a new stance. In the words of Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the IRGC, “Henceforth if Israel attacks our interests, assets, figures, and citizens anywhere, it will be met with a counterattack from within the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The failure of the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and Israel’s alleged covert activities in Iran in recent years have led Tehran to abandon its policy of strategic patience, no longer willing to fight a shadow war by relying on its regional non-state allies. Recent incidents, such as Iran’s mid-January missile strike on Pakistan in response to a Jaish al-Adl terrorist attack on the port city of Chabahar and its mid-April drone and missile strike on Israel, reflect a change in Iran's stance and a new willingness to take more assertive measures. According to a post on the social media platform X by Mohammad Jamshidi, President Ebrahim Raisi’s deputy chief of staff, "Iran's era of strategic patience is over."
However, contrary to many analysts’ fears, Iran is aware of the benefits of remaining a latent nuclear power, rather than becoming an openly declared one. As the Iranian authorities see things, possessing threshold nuclear capabilities will not only deter large-scale military attacks but also provide greater leverage in negotiations with the United States and other adversaries. In addition, it could reinvigorate the possibility of regional de-escalation and improve bilateral relations with important neighbors, processes that have been underway since March 2023, following the China-brokered rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Being a threshold nuclear power and its deterrence benefits
Iranian officials clearly believe that the acquisition of nuclear weapons is not necessary to deter a direct attack by Israel, as its ability to launch a large-scale assault on Iran without US support is limited by geopolitical constraints. Both the US and Iran have been highly reluctant to engage in a direct, large-scale conflict since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israeli soil, which sparked a spiraling escalation in the region. Since Oct. 7, Tehran and Washington have managed to handle regional tensions relatively successfully.
Following Iran's retaliatory strike on Israel, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian assured the US that Iran had no intention of targeting American bases in the region, and Washington reiterated its stance of non-participation in Israel’s offensive operations against Iran. From Iran's perspective, Israel's attack on an air base in Isfahan on April 19 was a clear attempt at sabotage. According to Iranian media, this incident, similar to a previous operation reportedly carried out by the Israelis in January 2023, involved small drones believed to have originated from within Iranian territory. Iranian officials assert that their air defense system successfully intercepted and destroyed the drones mid-flight.
In response to perceived threats from the US and Israel in the region, Iran has employed a combination of internal and external balancing strategies that has effectively safeguarded its security thus far. In terms of internal balancing, Iran relies on enrichment and reprocessing facilities like other latent nuclear states, such as Japan. Nuclear latency refers to states with the potential ability to assemble a nuclear arsenal in a relatively short period of time in the event of an existential threat. By maintaining the ability to rapidly build nuclear weapons without actually doing so, a policy known as the “Japan Option,” Iran remains in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In addition, Iran also relies on its conventional military strength and the exploitation of strategic geopolitical assets. In terms of external balancing, Tehran has built a network of partners and allies across the Middle East who share the common goal of countering US and Israeli hegemony. Iranian policymakers view these internal and external components as interconnected, creating a stable equilibrium to safeguard Iran’s security and interests.
Iran's defense doctrine is based on the concept of active deterrence, whereby a predetermined countermeasure is carried out if deterrence alone fails, thus reinforcing deterrence of further actions by belligerent actors. In this regard, the recent tit-for-tat exchange of missile strikes between Iran and Israel does not signify a major shift away from this doctrine and toward nuclear armament, but rather signals a new stage in an ongoing active deterrence approach. Israel's emphasis on keeping the scope of conflict limited and the American commitment to non-involvement in military engagements with Iran indicate that the doctrine has been effective in deterring broader military action against Iran thus far.
As a threshold nuclear power, Iran maintains strategic ambiguity around its nuclear capabilities and can use this as a political bargaining chip. According to the IAEA, from June 2023 on, Iran reduced the rate at which it was enriching uranium (up to 60%) for a few months, before reversing course in November 2023 and increasing the rate of production of enriched uranium (up to 60%) to 9 kg per month. The most recent report from the IAEA indicates that while Iran has been enriching uranium at the same rate since the beginning of 2024, it also downblended about 31.8 kg of its 60%-enriched uranium stockpile, reducing its total reserves by 6.8 kg.
These fluctuations in the production and reserves of enriched uranium suggest that clandestine negotiations and agreements between Iran and the United States may have been taking place in recent months. Despite the ongoing war in Gaza, Iran managed to export approximately 1.56 million barrels of oil per day in the first three months of 2024, the greatest volume since late 2018. While Iran has been able to master various methods of circumventing sanctions during this period, it seems that the Biden administration is reluctant to enforce strict secondary sanction measures that would further impede Iranian oil sales.
Deterrence against the US-Israel bloc
While the war in Gaza has provided Iran with new opportunities to affect regional power dynamics, being a threshold nuclear power does not impose extra costs on it. Rather, it provides Tehran with significant leverage if external pressures increase. As such, Iran's nuclear capabilities serve as both a deterrent and a bargaining tool. Currently, Tehran views the United States and Israel as its primary external threats. Consequently, it shapes its regional security strategies with these two nuclear powers in mind. As a component of this approach, Tehran endeavors to reduce threat perceptions among its Arab neighbors by implementing a neighborhood policy and initiating confidence-building measures, such as expanding bilateral diplomatic relations.
Iran seeks to continue strengthening its relations with its neighbors, break out of its political isolation, and, to some extent, address its lagging economic development. Its economy, hindered by sanctions, needs to be revived, and in this context, Tehran remains acutely aware of the material and relative costs of declaring itself a nuclear power. The suspicions of analysts, predicting a surge in Tehran’s enriched uranium production, may be unmerited given the many benefits that Iran could reap from remaining a threshold power.
Nevertheless, there is a real prospect that Iran could become a nuclear power — a move that would have dire implications — and this is more likely to occur if or when Iran perceives a threat to its security that cannot be adequately managed by its existing use of active deterrence. Were the US and Israel to jointly carry out a significant military strike targeting Iran's key nuclear and military installations, this could render Tehran’s current deterrence strategy unviable, ineffective, and unsustainable. On April 18, Gen. Ahmad Haqtalab, commander of the Nuclear Centers Protection and Security Corps, stated that if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran may seriously reassess its nuclear strategy.
There are several steps key regional players could take that would ensure this does not happen. First and foremost, resuming diplomatic negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and establishing clear rules for preventing its weaponization, in return for a reduction in the scale and impact of economic sanctions, would benefit all stakeholders. Second, as an additional step, encouraging neighboring countries, particularly Gulf Cooperation Council member states, to develop constructive diplomatic and economic relations with Iran would discourage Tehran from pursuing further uranium enrichment, disincentivize engagement in more small-scale military confrontations, and build on Iran's tentative commitment to assume the role of a responsible regional actor. Finally, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as distant as that might seem right now in the midst of war, would be a crucial step toward mitigating the risk of escalating tensions between Israel and Iran as well as alleviating the heated security crisis that currently plagues the region.
Zakiyeh Yazdanshenas is a Senior Research Fellow at the Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies Center in Tehran. You can follow her on X @YzdZakiyeh.
Alam Saleh is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies at Australian National University. You can follow him on X @alamsaleh1.
Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images
The Middle East Institute (MEI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-for-profit, educational organization. It does not engage in advocacy and its scholars’ opinions are their own. MEI welcomes financial donations, but retains sole editorial control over its work and its publications reflect only the authors’ views. For a listing of MEI donors, please click here.
Saturday, June 08, 2019
Intel Vets Tell Trump Iran Is Not Top Terror Sponsor Thirteen of the 14 Muslim Groups identified by the U.S. intelligence community as actively hostile to the US are Sunni, not Shia, and are not supported by Iran:
A group of U.S. intelligence veterans urges President Trump to stop his administration’s false claims about Iran being the leading state sponsor of terrorism when U.S. allies, such as Saudi Arabia, are clearly much guiltier.
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Is Iran the “World’s Leading Sponsor of Terrorism?”
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY/BACKGROUND
We are concerned by recent strident and stark public statements from key members of your Administration that paint Iran in very alarmist terms. The average American, without the benefit of history, could easily be persuaded that Iran poses an imminent threat and that there is no alternative for us but military conflict.
President Donald Trump addresses the nation about his Iran policy on Oct. 13, 2017. (Screenshot from Whitehouse.gov)
We find this uncomfortably familiar territory. Ten years ago former President George W. Bush was contemplating a war with Iran when, in November of 2007, intelligence analysts issued a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) debunking the prevailing conventional wisdom; namely, that Iran was on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon. The NIE concluded that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003.
Recalling this moment in his memoir, Decision Points, President Bush noted that the NIE’s “eye-popping” intelligence findings stayed his hand. He added this rhetorical question: “How could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”
We believe that you are facing a similar situation today. But instead of an inaccurate claim that Iran has nuclear weapons, the new canard to justify war with Iran is the claim that Iran remains the “world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.” This is incorrect, as we explain below.
* * *
One of the recurring big bipartisan lies being pushed on the public with the enthusiastic help of a largely pliant media is that Iran is the prime sponsor of terrorism in the world today.
In the recent presentation of your administration’s National Security Strategy for 2018, the point is made that:
“Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, has taken advantage of instability to expand its influence through partners and proxies, weapon proliferation, and funding. . . . Iran continues to perpetuate the cycle of violence in the region, causing grievous harm to civilian populations.”
Those sentiments are echoed by several other countries of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, for example, declared in October 2015 that: Iran “is the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world, and it is working on destabilizing the region.”
The Saudi foreign minister conveniently declined to mention that 15 of the 19 terrorists who hijacked planes and attacked America on 11 September 2001 were Saudis, not Iranians. And, while Iran was an active promoter of terrorism two decades ago, it is no longer in the forefront of global terrorism. Ironically, that dubious distinction now goes to Iran’s accusers — first and foremost, Saudi Arabia.
The depiction of Iran as “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” is not supported by the facts. While Iran is guilty of having used terrorism as a national policy tool, the Iran of 2017 is not the Iran of 1981. In the early days of the Islamic Republic, Iranian operatives routinely carried out car bombings, kidnappings and assassinations of dissidents and of American citizens. That has not been the case for many years. Despite frequent claims by U.S. officials that Iran is engaged in terrorism, we simply note that the incidents recorded annually in the U.S. Department of State’s Patterns of Global Terrorism rarely identifies a terrorist incident as an act by or on behalf of Iran.
Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah also has evolved radically. In the early years of the Islamic Republic, Hezbollah was often a proxy and sub-contractor for Iran. But during the last 20 years Hezbollah has become an entity and political force in its own right. It fought Israel to a standstill in 2006 in southern Lebanon, which was a watershed moment in establishing Hezbollah’s transformation into a conventional army. In the intervening years, Hezbollah, which is now part of the Lebanese government, also has turned away from the radical, religious driven violence that is the hallmark of the Sunni extremists, like ISIS.
Iran’s Asymmetrical Response
After Iran fell under the rule of the Ayatollah in 1979 terrorism, its role in high profile terrorist attacks, such as the taking of U.S. hostages and the bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Lebanon, fed understandable U.S. animosity towards Iran. But Iran’s actions were not driven primarily by blind hatred or radical religious views. For Iran terrorism was a way to punch back against more powerful foes, principally the United States, which was providing military and intelligence support to Iran’s neighbor and enemy, Iraq.
Portrait of the late Ruhollah Khomeini by Mohammad Sayyid
The Iranians were also pragmatic and had direct dealings with Israel. During the early days of the Iranian revolution the Mullahs, despite publicly denouncing Israel, happily accepted secret military support from the Israelis. Israel was equally pragmatic. The Israeli leaders ignored the Mullahs and gave the support as a means of helping counter the threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. A classic case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The public image of Iran as a hotbed of fanatical terrorists has been usurped since the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in east Africa by Al Qaeda and other radical Sunni entities. The U.S. Government’s own list of terrorist attacks since 2001 shows a dramatic drop in the violence carried out by Iran and an accompanying surge in horrific acts by radical Sunni Muslims who are not aligned with Iran. The latest edition of the Global Terrorism Index, a project of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, shows that four groups accounted for 74 percent of all fatalities from terrorism in 2015 — Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS.
Thirteen of the 14 Muslim Groups identified by the U.S. intelligence community as actively hostile to the US are Sunni, not Shia, and are not supported by Iran:
Iran is providing military drones and short-range missiles to Russia in exchange for advanced Russian military technology.
The deepening military cooperation between the two countries has raised concerns for the US.
When Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visited Moscow in early 2022, he had high hopes of leaving with defense deals that would circumvent international sanctions and take advantage of the expiration of a United Nations embargo on arms trading with Tehran.
Russian fighter jets, advanced antimissile defense systems, and other high-tech military equipment were high on Raisi's wish list. But questions arose: What could sanction-hit Iran, short on cash and technology, offer energy-rich Russia in return? And would Russia be willing to send advanced military technology to Iran at risk of angering rival states and important customers in the Middle East?
Russia's invasion of Ukraine just a month after Raisi's visit provided the answer.
As it became apparent that the war would drag on much longer than the Kremlin anticipated, depleting Russia's arsenal, Moscow turned to Iran for military drones that have proved to be a deadly addition to Russia's war effort. Iranian short-range missiles, as well as shells and ammunition, have reportedly helped shore up dwindling supplies. And there are suggestions that Iranian ballistic missiles could be delivered in the future.
In exchange, Iran is anticipating the delivery of advanced Russian Su-35 combat jets, S-400 antimissile systems, a military satellite, and other long-sought military equipment. CNN has reported that Russia is sending captured weapons that the United States supplied to Ukraine on to Iran, where they could potentially be reverse-engineered to produce Iranian-made equivalents.
And according to The Wall Street Journal this week, Russia is also aiding Tehran's efforts to clamp down on persistent antiestablishment protests at home by providing advanced surveillance software.Su-35 Deal Goes Down
Immediately after the UN arms embargo against Iran expired in 2020, Tehran lauded the opportunity to strengthen its security.
The lifting of the arms ban was part of the terms of the moribund nuclear deal signed between Iran and world powers in 2015, which curbed Tehran's sensitive nuclear activities in exchange for relief from international sanctions.
The 13-year embargo had denied Iran the right to import or export conventional weapons, making Tehran largely dependent on its own military technology to keep pace with regional foes Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Remaining U.S. sanctions continued to limit Iran's ability to import technology, particularly any that could aid Iran's suspected efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and the European Union maintained its own arms embargo on conventional arms and missile technology in an attempt to get Iran to adhere to the nuclear deal after Washington unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018.
But the lifting of the UN embargo opened a window for conventional arms trading with Iran, with Russia and China seen as the most likely suppliers.
Raisi described his two-day visit to Moscow in January 2022 as a "turning point" in Tehran's relationship with Russia as Iranian officials expressed interest in purchasing fifth-generation Russian fighter jets, air-defense systems, helicopters, and tanks. Acknowledging Iran's strapped budget, however, defense experts suggested Iran was unlikely to invest in prohibitively expensive combat aircraft.
Air-Combat Veterans
For decades, Iran has struggled to maintain an air force that depends largely on U.S. aircraft purchased before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with some dating back to the 1960s. Longstanding U.S. sanctions denying Iran access to spare parts for its aging F-5s, F-14s, and F-4 Phantoms have left Iran with a patchwork fleet of U.S. aircraft, Iranian aircraft modeled on U.S. aircraft, and some Chinese and Russian warplanes purchased in the 1990s.
While Iran's wish for Russian four-plus-generation Su-30 multirole fighters had been denied for years, the Su-35 -- a fourth generation fighter-bomber and Russia's only serially produced fighter aircraft for export -- surprisingly emerged as Iran's best hope to update its air force.
In January 2022, as U.S. sanctions pressure intensified amid concerns of an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, Egypt canceled an estimated $2 billion contract for the delivery of Su-35s. Cairo's move followed similar terminations of discussions to sell Su-35s to Indonesia and Algeria.
"The Su-35 is the best multirole fighter the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) could hope to acquire in a short timeframe," Jeremy Binnie, Middle East defense specialist at the global intelligence company Janes, told RFE/RL in written comments. "The aircraft have been sitting in the open at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aircraft Plant since they started coming off the production line in 2020."
While it was expected that Iran would try to get the Su-35s once bound for Egypt, the sticking point was whether Tehran would be willing to allocate funds for the air force at the expense of weapons-development programs or the budget of the powerful Islamic Republican Guards Corps (IRGC).
In January, Iran's semiofficial Tasnim news agency quoted Shahriar Heidari, head of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, as saying Iran would receive 24 Su-35s as early as this month. Heidari also said Iran had ordered helicopters, air-defense systems, and missile systems from Russia.
While the specifics of the Su-35 deal have not been confirmed, Binnie said, "We could speculate that Russia's urgent need for one-way-attack [drones] helped tip the equation" in favor of Iran's air force. This he added, "would reflect an interesting Russian calculus that these cheap but long-range weapons are actually more useful than advanced multirole fighters" in the Ukraine war.
The Su-35 has had a spotty record in the Ukraine war, with Ukrainian forces claiming to have shot down many of them. But the deployment of more modern fighters to the Ukrainian battlefield has led Kyiv to express worries that they will significantly strengthen Russia's ability to dominate the skies.
Binnie said he believes the Su-35s will be used "primarily in the air-to-air role, based deep inside Iran to increase their survivability so they can be scrambled to intercept aircraft coming in to attack the nuclear and other strategic sites."
This, he added, will essentially take over the role of the U.S.-made F-14s based in Iran's central province of Isfahan while providing a "massive improvement on those 1970s-vintage aircraft."
Challenges Of Cooperation
During a recent trip to the Middle East, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed concerns over Russia's deepening military cooperation with Iran over the past year, saying it "poses serious challenges" for the region.
Austin highlighted the "lethal consequences" of Iran's provision of drones to Russia and the potential for Moscow to send "technology to Iran in exchange for its assistance."
Austin also reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.
To this point, there is no indication that nuclear-power Russia's defense cooperation with Iran might expand beyond conventional weaponry.
The addition of Su-35s to Iran, while helpful, are not seen as a panacea for its air force's capabilities in the face of better-equipped regional foes.
And while Russia's S-400 antimissile system, of which at least one has been ordered according to Iranian media, would boost Iran's ability to fend off potential air strikes, its provision would not violate previous UN or existing EU arms embargoes because it is a defensive weapon.
Just A Fling?
Regarding the prospect of future arms deals, Binnie said he expects both Moscow and Tehran to take a cautious approach that will not risk weakening their own defenses or transfer top technology.
"For example, due to import restrictions, Russia's military industries will probably struggle to replace any S-400 that is taken out of the line and transferred to Iran," Binnie said. And "supplying ballistic or cruise missiles to Russia would reduce Iran's deterrent against attack."
Advanced Russian tanks, which are at a premium on the Ukrainian front, would also likely not be on offer to Iran.
Speaking about the state of current U.S. sanctions against Iran and Russia, Peter Piatetsky, a former U.S. Treasury Department official who is now the CEO of the consultancy firm Castellum.AI, said they are not designed to stop cash or barter deals between the two states.
"It doesn't mean that sanctions are not effective; they simply are not designed to seize physical items like cash or weapons," he said. "Sanctions can be imposed on the persons involved, but with both Iran and Russia being international pariahs, they don't seem to care."
As for whether Russia and Iran's defense dealings can last beyond the current state of mutual need in the face of domestic economic issues, sanctions, and international pressure, Piatetsky said it will play out much like any relationship.
"What starts out as a relationship of convenience can become a true partnership. True partnerships can crumble and become transactional, true partnerships can endure stress and grow stronger, and parties can also enter into a relationship of convenience and stay in it despite resentments and a lack of mission alignment because they cannot identify better options," he said. "Russia and Iran are in the latter bucket."
Israel praised the defense effort as a "significant strategic achievement." But around 60 of Iran's missiles failed on their own, according to several reports.
An estimated 50% of Iran's 120 ballistic missiles failed to launch or crashed in flight, unnamed US officials told CBS News and The Wall Street Journal.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan shows a video of drones and missiles heading toward Israel during a United Nations Security Council on April 14, 2024.CHARLY TRIBALLEAU via Getty Images
The attack also consisted of 170 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and 30 cruise missiles, none of which crossed into Israeli territory, according to an online statement shared by a spokesperson for Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Speaking to CBS News, two US officials said five ballistic missiles made it through air defenses and impacted Israeli territory.
Four landed at Navatim Air Force Base, which was thought to be Iran's primary target. One hit a runway, one hit an empty hanger, and another hit a hanger that wasn't in use, the publication said. Meanwhile, another missile appeared to be aimed at a radar site in northern Israel but missed, the outlet added.
At the time of writing on Monday, one person — an unnamed 10-year-old girl — was reported as "severely injured" by shrapnel, the IDF confirmed. The details of her condition have not been released.
Though Israel has not yet said how it plans to respond, the IDF spokesperson said it is "prepared and ready for further developments and threats."
"We are doing and will do everything necessary to protect the security of the civilians of the State of Israel," they added.
Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran's ambassador to the UN, told Sky News that reports of Israel's forthcoming response are a "threat" and "talk, not an action."
He said Israel "would know what our second retaliation would be" and that they "understand the next one will be most decisive."
Iran ignored warnings from the US before it launched its attack. President Biden said on Friday that he expected Iran to attack Israel "sooner, rather than later." His message to Iran was short and simple: "Don't."
"The fact that the Biden administration is both arming Israel and sending aid to Gaza shows the world that the Biden team has no strategic competence," McFate said. "They've already lost control."
Representatives for the IDF, Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the US Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iran’s Better, Stealthier Drones Are Remaking Global Warfare
Peter Waldman Mon, Apr 8, 2024
(Bloomberg) — In January, rebels fighting the Sudanese army shot down a drone near Khartoum. As jubilant gunmen posted video of the wreckage on social media, they offered a fresh data point on how Iranian technology is remaking the global weapons trade.
The drone in the video, which is clearly modeled after Iran’s Ababil model — the workhorse of paramilitaries across the Middle East since it was developed in the 1990s — reflected a design tweak: Its two front tires, instead of the usual one, provided actual battlefield evidence that Sudan is modifying the Iranian drone into its own weapon, which it calls the Zagel-3.
That revelation follows the emergence in the last two years of ramped-up Iranian drone production in at least five other countries, from South America to Central Asia. Most recently, Russia has started making Iranian drones for its war in Ukraine, bringing the number of countries using Iranian technology, assistance, or parts to at least a dozen.
Iran’s mastery of relatively low-tech drone warfare poses urgent new risks to Middle East stability; its leaders threatened last week to retaliate against Israel for an airstrike on its embassy in Syria that killed officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Earlier this year, three American service members were killed and more than 40 others injured by an Iranian-designed kamikaze drone at the Tower 22 US military base in Jordan. Farther afield, Tehran’s growing role in proliferating the disruptive technology to militias and militaries near and far has been roiling regional animosities on four continents.
Iran’s drone diplomacy is earning foreign currency to fund its defense industry, strengthening its strategic alliances, and making it a formidable arms dealer — with the potential to change the nature of conflict around the world.
Shackled by more than 40 years of economic sanctions, Iran is busting out on the wings of what are essentially model airplanes that are propelled by lawnmower motors, guided by US-made components plucked from the internet and retailers’ shelves and weaponized for war. More than its missile program, its reputed terrorist network, or even what the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency have described as Iran’s past nuclear-weapons efforts, drones are making the Islamic Republic a player with increasingly far-flung ambitions. The US and allies such as Israel are struggling to respond, particularly in the febrile crescent that extends from Iraq through Syria and into Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza, and Yemen.
“The last two years have been a period of hyper-acceleration of new tactics and techniques for Iran’s employment of UAVs,” or unmanned aerial vehicles, says Matthew McInnis, a Pentagon intelligence officer for 15 years and, from 2019 to 2021, the State Department’s deputy special representative for Iran. “All states are behind in terms of figuring out defensive capacity.”
For its part — and despite a recent leak of hacked documents that indicates otherwise — Iran has repeatedly denied selling Russia drones for use in Ukraine but admitted it sent a “small number” before the February 2022 invasion. Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said in January that Iran wasn’t responsible for other countries copying Iranian drones. And in a statement to Bloomberg News, Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations said, “from a moral standpoint, Iran abstains from engaging in arms transactions with any party embroiled in active conflicts with another due to concerns regarding the potential utilization of such weaponry during the course of said conflict.”
Iran’s drones are getting better and stealthier. The one that hit Tower 22 in January penetrated US defenses by shadowing an American drone that was landing there — meaning some defenses may have been down — according to two members of the Syrian conflict-monitoring group, ETANA Syria. The group tracks and analyzes data from a reputable network of military and civilian contacts in the Middle East, says Joel Rayburn, a long-time US Army intelligence officer who, from 2017 to 2021, served as a senior official for the Middle East at the US National Security Council and the State Department. “The data they gather enables them to see emerging trends in the security situation often before they are apparent.”
A spokesman for the US Department of Defense called Iran’s procurement, development, and proliferation of drones “an increasing threat to international peace and security” and noted that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last month established a panel of senior leaders to find effective ways to address “this urgent operational challenge.” Yet the Pentagon has released little information about the attack in Jordan.
The Washington Post cited a defense source saying it was a Shahed-101, a small attack drone that needs no special equipment for launch, flies low to better evade radar, and can travel at least 700 kilometers (435 miles), three times the range of the Ababil-2 — the previous mainstay of regional militias. The Shahed-101 made at least two other successful strikes against US forces in January, breaking through American defenses before Iran said it was pulling back its proxies to ease tensions.
Iran is believed to have adapted the shadowing maneuver, an old trick with piloted aircraft but new for drones, from Russia’s experience in Ukraine. Iranian analysts have traveled to Russia to study the success of the Iranian Shahed-136 drones manufactured there by the thousands for use against Ukraine and to further refine their evasion tactics, says Nikita Smagin, an Iran expert at the Russian International Affairs Council in Moscow.
“Russia and Iran are learning from each other. That is almost as important as the technology-sharing itself,” says McInnis, the former US envoy and intelligence officer.
In the Red Sea, Yemen’s Iranian-sponsored Houthis have managed to slash trade through the Suez Canal by more than 50% this year by firing drones and missiles at cargo ships. And since the October outbreak of war in Gaza, Iranian-backed militia groups in Syria and Iraq have bombarded remote US military bases in the region dozens of times, including the fatal January strike.
Iran’s drone use grew more sophisticated after the Trump administration pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018. US and European diplomats negotiated for two more years to extend related United Nations Security Council restrictions on Iranian missile and drone sales. But after the US killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020, Iran and its backer Russia were unlikely to accept any further UN limits on Iran’s weapons programs, concluded McInnis, who led the talks with European allies. The negotiations collapsed. “Basically after that the Iranians were waiting for the US election, and then COVID hit,” making talks difficult, he says.
The UN restrictions on Iran expired in October, days after war engulfed Gaza. A few weeks later, the IRGC unveiled its most sophisticated weapons and drones to date for Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at its aerospace museum in Tehran. They included drones such as the latest Shahed-139, an improved version of the medium-altitude, long-range Shahed-129 deployed in Syria, and the high-altitude, long-range Shahed-147 spy drone, comparable to Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk.
The ayatollah himself was photographed next to a Shahed-149 “Gaza” drone, with a battery of missiles underwing — named and designed to send an unmistakable message. The attack drone boasts a throw weight exceeding three tons, a payload of 13 bombs, and a range extending up to 2,500 km — far enough to reach Israel.
A model of the unmanned Gaza was also featured at Iran’s pavilion at Qatar’s annual maritime defense show in Doha last month. On March 13, Iran’s defense minister announced Iran is now self-sufficient in the production of drone engines and disclosed that its overall arms exports had increased four to five times over the past two years, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Sanctions are the mother of invention — and circumvention. Blocked by export controls from purchasing Western technology with possible military applications, Iran relies on whatever electronic parts it can buy from Asian suppliers or can spirit from the US and Europe through a wide network of front companies.
The gleanings of this scavenger-style approach power Iran’s most lethal suicide drone, the Shahed-136, which is turning up in barrages on Ukrainian battlefields. Almost every part is of American or European origin, according to an analysis of drone wreckage by Ukraine’s Independent Anti-Corruption Commission. For example, the Shahed-136 uses a communications chip made by Wilmington, Massachusetts-based Analog Devices Inc. that’s for sale online from a UK-based electronics distributor’s website in Hong Kong for HK$2,649 ($339) and available in 11 other Asian countries. The same drone uses a Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc. microcontroller listed for HK$290.
A spokesperson for Texas Instruments said the company abides by all US export restrictions and requires its distributors to as well, carries out multiple screenings on customer orders, and takes action if it learns of illicit diversions. An Analog Devices spokesperson said it adheres to all sanctions and embargoes on Iran and maintains “stringent monitoring and audit processes” to prevent illicit diversions of its products by resellers. Some lawmakers are incredulous.
US companies either “know or should know where their components are going,” said Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, during a February hearing on US export controls. He called the continued flow of US technology to Russia, which turns up in Iranian drones and Russian missiles on the Ukrainian battlefield despite export restrictions, “emblematic of a larger failing with huge national security implications for the United States.”
The origin of Iran’s drone industry is a story of innovate or die. The revolutionary regime has faced US and international sanctions off and on since militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran in 1979. Self-sufficiency is a way of life.
Iran’s first homemade drones anchored its arsenal during its long standoff against Iraq in the 1980s, as the US and Saudi Arabia lavished weapons and money on Saddam Hussein. A quarter-million Iranians died. At the time, Western military planners were still debating the ethical and battlefield implications of drones. Iran never wavered. A drone-development ecosystem of universities, private companies, and military research centers emerged.
In the early 2000s, Iran shared much of its drone technology with Syria, its closest Middle East ally, according to an unpublished report by ETANA, which closely tracks military actions in the region. Dozens of Iranian scientists moved to Aleppo in northern Syria to work in the country’s main weapons lab and co-developed four suicide drone models with their Syrian counterparts. The team even converted two fixed-wing aircraft — the MIG-21 and a small, reverse-engineered Cessna — into pilotless kamikaze planes that were deployed against insurgents during Syria’s civil war.
Parts and manufacturing guidance are routinely smuggled from Syria to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, which produces a range of drones for battling Israel, according to the ETANA report. In 2010, Iran agreed to cover all costs of co-produced drones and parts delivered to Hezbollah, the report says. One joint-venture model, the Ababil-3DI surveillance drone, was fabricated in Lebanon using equipment made by Samsung and Hyundai and used a device made by ATEN International Co. in Taiwan to transmit high-resolution images to Hezbollah’s ground stations, according to ETANA’s report. In 2022, ATEN announced it stopped all exports to Iran. Both Samsung and Hyundai have dozens of subsidiaries, and it’s unclear which units the ETANA report refers to. Representatives declined to comment.
Iran’s own drone technology got a lift in 2011, when the nation’s cyber command electronically hijacked a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel operating on the Afghan-Iran border. Iranian aerospace experts reverse-engineered the fiberglass, bat-shaped drone, and placed it in a plexiglass case at a Revolutionary Guard base for guests to admire, according to a Syrian military engineer who later saw it. In 2018, a clone of the US drone, laden with explosives, made its debut flying from Syria into Israel during a particularly tense moment in the Middle East. Israeli helicopters shot it down.
“Can you imagine if an Iranian drone exploded in Tel Aviv? It would have prompted a war,” says Rayburn, the Iran expert who was on the NSC staff in the White House at the time. “That was six years ago and led directly to what the Iranians are deploying now across the region.”
Today in Iran, foreign front networks managed by thousands of private companies provide imported parts and sometimes finished components to state drone manufacturers. Descriptions of these back-channel supply chains have emerged in at least half a dozen US indictments filed or unsealed since 2020, which allege that Iranians attempted to launder US-made parts orders for drones and other weapons through businesses in China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Europe.
One US case involves Jalal Rohollahnejad, 46, whose tribulations show how some of Iran’s brightest computer scientists and engineers spend much of their time dodging sanctions. The defense and oil industries are among the few sectors of Iran’s sanctioned economy with job prospects for engineers, who comprise about 40% of Iran’s total unemployed population of 2.5 million.
After graduating from college in 2002, Rohollahnejad worked for Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization “on research projects that were 100% scientific,” he would later tell a French judge at his extradition hearing. The AIO, which manages Iran’s missile program, was designated for sanctions by the US in 2005 and the European Union two years later. Rohollahnejad earned his PhD in optical engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, where, from 2014 to 2017, he co-authored 15 research papers about optical sensors in scientific journals. He worked for a Chinese company called Wuhan IRCEN Technology, which the US Commerce Department alleges supplied optoelectronic parts to Iran’s aerospace industry.Rohollahnejad, who responded in writing to questions from Bloomberg over LinkedIn, says he worked for Wuhan IRCEN to earn money for graduate school, but didn’t export any optoelectronic parts or US-made goods to Iran and abided by all Chinese and Iranian laws.
He later joined a private defense contractor in Tehran, which the US Treasury sanctioned in 2017 for supplying electronic parts to the Revolutionary Guards’ drone program — the sort of internal supplier that Iran cultivates to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers. “They’ve learned they can’t rely on anyone else,” says John Krzyzaniak, a Farsi-speaking researcher at the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington.
In 2019, Rohollahnejad was arrested on a US Interpol warrant at the Nice airport and jailed in France pending extradition to the US to face charges of procuring restricted technology for Iran. After being held for 13 months, Rohollahnejad was swapped for a French researcher imprisoned in Iran, a decision the US sharply criticized. Rohollahnejad says he traveled to Nice at the request of an Iranian official to review some oceanographic research by the French company, Marine Tech SAS. “There is a mistake,” he says.
One of his alleged accomplices in the procurement scheme, Saber Fakih, 48, was arrested in the UK and extradited to the US, where he pleaded guilty to sanctions violations in 2022 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. In Fakih’s confession statement in US District Court for the District of Columbia, he outlined a ruse led by Rohollahnejad and another indicted Iranian national to export to Iran a military-grade industrial microwave system from Massachusetts and a counter-drone electronic-warfare system from Maryland.
Rohollahnejad denies the US charges and says he didn’t know the microwave device had any military use. He says he was acting as a middleman for an Iranian food company that wanted to purchase the machine for food preservation. He declined to comment on the counter-drone system, which he says he didn’t personally order.
As the purchases were falling apart, Rohollahnejad emailed Fakih to reassure him he’d be taken care of. “We can start some other business in oil and gas field to cover some penalties of the microwave oven project,” Rohollahnejad wrote, according to Fakih’s confession. “I have some relations in Iran government [who] can support us.” Rohollahnejad says he wrote the emails only because he felt obligated to get the Iranian food company’s money back.
He’s proud of Iran’s engineering accomplishments with drones and other technologies, while uneasy about their use. “Most of us don’t like to use weapons in any invasion, especially by Russia in Ukraine,” Rohollahnejad says. “Iranian people do not have a good memory of the Russian Empire, the Soviets, and also the new Russia. They do not adhere to any ethics with their neighbors.”
Noisy, slow, and hardly discreet, drones are typically shot down at a cost far higher than the price of a typical Shahed or Ababil model. In Ukraine, volunteer drone-hunting teams track and fell them from the skies with hand-held floodlights, laser pointers and high-caliber machine guns. Yet in the Red Sea, the US and its allies are using anti-aircraft missiles, such as the Sparrow, the SM-2, and the Sea Viper, which can cost as much as $1 million apiece. “States are using inordinately expensive assets to shoot down cheap things,” says Erik Lin-Greenberg, an historian of military technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who researches the dynamics of drone warfare.
The Pentagon “is actively working to develop and deliver effective and affordable counter-drone capabilities,” spokesman Tom Crosson said in emailed responses to questions for this story. Neutralizing sophisticated drones isn’t easy, he said. “Depending on the size, maneuverability, speed, and other on-board technical capabilities of the drones, mitigating them requires a layered and integrated air defense architecture.”
Drones’ value proposition encourages users to unleash fusillades in hopes one or two hit their target. Russia has launched wave after wave of Iranian kamikaze drones at Ukrainian energy facilities and urban centers in recent months. On March 6, for example, it launched 42. While Ukraine’s air force said 38 were shot down, four slipped through and damaged several buildings, wounding at least seven people and knocking out power to 14,000 homes. The World Bank estimates Russia’s attacks have caused roughly $12 billion of damage to Ukraine’s energy sector.
By helping allies and proxies produce drones on their own turf — a unique approach in the drone industry — Iran’s partners gain technology and jobs, while Iran maintains a measure of deniability for how the weapons are used. Hacked documents recently leaked by the Prana Network show Russia is paying Iran $1.16 billion to manufacture 6,000 high-end Shahed-136 kamikaze drones through 2025. Striking video released in Russian media in March shows line after line of the triangle-shaped weapons that the IRGC says are capable of carrying 50 kilograms of explosives 2,500 km.
They’re being built at an industrial park in Alabuga, Tatarstan, about 1,000 km east of Moscow, where 3M Corp. and Ford Motor Co. had manufacturing ventures until the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The withdrawal of Western foreign investment left thousands of engineers free to turn their skills to weapons production. Much of the payment to Iran is expected to come in Russian arms, such as advanced Su-35 fighter jets.
To supporters of Iran’s clerical regime, its ability to produce such a valuable weapon for Russia — “the game-changer in Ukraine” — vindicates Ayatollah Khamenei’s stubborn insistence over the years that Western sanctions only make Iran stronger, says Vali Nasr, an Iran and Afghanistan adviser in the Obama administration and professor and former dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “Khamenei said what did Russia and China gain after all those years working with the West, only to be slapped down,” Nasr says. “He sees the US as incorrigible imperialists.”
Some drone deals are more adventurous than others. Iran recently reestablished relations with Sudan after a seven-year rift, to help the army fight a Sudanese paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces. Experts say the insurgents are supported by Iran’s rival across the Persian Gulf, the UAE, though UAE officials have denied that. Sudan’s armed forces said in March 2022 that they had produced the Zagel-3, the apparently modified Ababil with two wheels.
Elsewhere in Africa, Ethiopia has also used Iranian drones to quell rebellions on two fronts. And in Tajikistan, a cooperative US ally on a range of Central Asian issues, Iran’s drone production is causing a quandary in Washington over whether to sanction the government for collaborating with Iran’s IRGC. Such international manufacturing potentially gives Iran opportunities to skirt sanctions and obtain components in a country not subject to US export controls on technology, and then to use the foreign plant as a manufacturing base to re-import the final product, says MIT’s Lin-Greenberg.
Meanwhile, Morocco is angry at Iran for sending drones to Algeria for Polisario Front separatists in Western Sahara. Venezuela, which has been making Iranian drones since 2007 and is believed to have recently upgraded to include suicide drones like those being deployed in Ukraine and the Red Sea, could potentially threaten its neighbor and rival, Guyana. And Bolivia’s request for drones from Iran to monitor its border and combat drug traffickers has sparked a diplomatic spat with Argentina.
“Iran wants to be taken seriously as a world power, so they find nooks and crannies that give them a perch,” Nasr says.
In the end, unless China is willing to crack down on technology sales to Iran, stifling Iran’s drone industry is a lost cause, says Don Pearce, a former chief of interdiction at the Commerce Department. It may take five to 10 years for the West to develop effective military means to counter Iranian drones, experts say.
“It’s like sticking your finger into a levee that’s collapsing. The best we can do is try to slow it down and make it more expensive for Iran, which we’ve succeeded in doing,” Pearce says. “Trying to control them is like trying to control the jet stream from bringing air particles to Iran.”—With assistance from Noah Buhayar, Vlad Savov, Ethan Bronner, David Kocieniewski, Daniel Flatley, Patrick Sykes, Mohamed Alamin, Heejin Kim and Yoolim Lee.
