Iran’s supreme leader used a recent address to academics to praise the effectiveness of his country’s military drones, which according to Kyiv and the west are being sold to Russia and used to pummel Ukraine’s big cities.
Whereas once people doubted our technology, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, “now they’re saying: ‘Iranian drones are very dangerous, why are you selling it to so and so?’.”
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of deploying the Iran-made Shahed-136s against his country, saying Moscow had already ordered thousands more. Iran and Russia deny any trade in combat drones, but what are not in doubt are the increasingly cordial relations between Moscow and Tehran since the full invasion of Ukraine in February.