Iran boasts of receiving requests for its drones from 22 countries

While the Iranians win the sympathy of half the world with their challenge to the ayatollahs, they continue to make merits to attract disapproval and sanctions.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
23 October 2022 Sunday 15:30
8 Reads
Iran boasts of receiving requests for its drones from 22 countries

While the Iranians win the sympathy of half the world with their challenge to the ayatollahs, they continue to make merits to attract disapproval and sanctions. Now, on account of kamikaze drones, which threaten to turn the harsh Ukrainian winter into a deep freeze.

Throwing the stone and hiding the hand is part of this war, like others. See the sabotage of the German-Russian Nordstream gas pipeline and the Crimean viaduct. Hence Tehran denies its contribution to the war in weapons and instructors as much as NATO flaunts it.

The latest object of contention is the drone campaign with which Russia has been hammering, for two Mondays, the urban electrical infrastructure, to demoralize the civilian population. This icy perspective is beginning to make visible a new wave of Ukrainians in countries like Turkey, where they are added to the Russians who do not want to be recruited.

This new episode of asymmetric warfare inverts the costs. Until now, the Russians punctually damaged strategic objectives with very expensive Kalibr hypersonic missiles, "impossible" to intercept. Now, instead, the protagonists are drones of less than ten thousand euros that Moscow calls Guerán-2 and brands as Russian-made. But that Washington insists that they are Iranian Shahed-136, with instructors of this nationality supervising them from occupied Crimea.

Although these drones can be seen and heard from afar, detecting them is difficult and intercepting them is dangerous, because they fly slowly and low. But France, the United Kingdom and Germany have grabbed them by the tail to claim their investigation at the UN, while the EU is already announcing new sanctions on Tehran.

The supreme guide, Ali Khamenei, ironizes: "But didn't they say they were a Photoshop thing?" The truth is that, since they lost their commander Qasem Soleimani, in a US drone attack, in 2020 in Baghdad, the Guardians of the Revolution have not stopped perfecting their own and equipping them with underground bases. "22 countries have been interested in our unmanned aircraft," they now add.

His first, indirect victory came when Yemen's Houthis wrested a truce from Riyadh and Abu Dhabi after swarming their oil industry. He already wanted to see the hand of Iran.

For its part, Iran opens the focus beyond Ukraine, with attention to the repercussions in Syria or Armenia. The Pasdaran have just carried out maneuvers along the Azerbaijani border, not by chance. On the verge of the last summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which accepted Iran as a member, Azerbaijan had attacked southern Armenia, sending a serious warning about its meager border with Iran. The borders of Armenia are sacred, they would have warned in turn in Tehran. India, which is pursuing a corridor for its goods to Europe through Iran, Armenia and Georgia, agrees.

The fact is that Iran is suspicious of Israeli penetration in Azerbaijan, almost as much as in Iraqi Kurdistan. In the last Nagorno-Karabakh war, Azerbaijan wreaked havoc among the Armenians with drones from Israel – kamikazes – and from Turkey. The latter also had their moment of splendor in favor of the Ukraine, at the beginning of the invasion.

"But we will not deliver weapons to Ukraine," Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has settled. Former Russian President Dimitri Medvedev had warned: "That would destroy all relations between our states." The same week that a Hamas delegation has set foot in Damascus again after ten years. Israel aspires to continue attacking Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria – like last Friday – without Moscow flinching.

Lastly, the hopes of rejoining the US in the Iran nuclear supervision agreement are fading and, with them, the incentives for moderation in Tehran, which also takes note of what it calls Western maneuvers to inflame the protests in its streets.