A member of the Iranian parliament has admitted that Iran supplies Russia with drones and missiles in exchange for soybeans and wheat. Official Tehran denies that it has transferred ballistic missiles to Russia.
Ahmad Bakshaish Ardestani, who is a member of the Security and Foreign Relations Committee of the Iranian Parliament, spoke about the missile delivery in an interview with Didban Iran.
"Iran exports drones and missiles to Russia as part of economic and political cooperation. Russia, for its part, cooperates with Iran to circumvent the sanctions," Ardestani said, quoted by the Russian edition of the BBC.
"We import a lot of goods from Russia. We need to free up imports of soybeans and wheat to meet our needs. One part of that includes sending missiles, and the other part is sending military drones to Russia," the Iranian lawmaker continued, reasoning that Iran should find opportunities to earn money for imports under sanctions.
Over the past week, several Western media reported that Iranian Fath-360 short-range ballistic missiles have already been delivered to Russia. They cited American sources. The Fath-360 missile is known to have a maximum range of up to 120 km and a warhead weighing 150 kg, being guided using satellite navigation.
And in the previous months there were such publications with reference to anonymous Western sources, mostly from the intelligence services.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry expressed "deep concern" from such messages and called on the international community to "increase pressure on Tehran and Moscow to protect international peace and security".
Just a few months after the start of Russia's war against Ukraine, reports emerged that Moscow was using Iranian combat drones. For months, neither side of the deal, Russia nor Iran, has admitted this, and to this day there is no official information on how many drones were delivered. In Ukraine, it is also known that there were Iranian instructors who trained the Russian military to work with the "Shaheed" type of unmanned aerial vehicles.