The war in Ukraine constituted an arena for testing the latest advanced weapons, and for pushing war technologies into the fierce battlefields.
In the early fall of 2022, the Russian army began using Iranian-made drones in its attacks against Ukrainian military targets, including artillery sites, missile launchers, and communication points.
Moscow later began launching broader and more coordinated attacks on a set of Ukrainian strategic targets, as well as civilian ones, most notably power stations.
In the aftermath of the bombing of the Crimean Bridge in the fall of 2022, which the Ukrainian intelligence services acknowledged being behind, Moscow launched a series of attacks on the main power stations in Kiev.
Asharq Al-Awsat reviewed official British documents, which bore evidence of Iran’s violations of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2216, prohibits the export of weapons to the Houthi group in Yemen, and Resolution 2231, which represents part of the comprehensive joint action plan signed by Tehran with international parties, and restricts Iran’s manufacture and proliferation of weapons that violate the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).
The documents included evidence provided by the Ukrainian armed forces to the British Ministry of Defense, proving Iran’s violations of the arms embargo and confirming Russia’s use of Iranian-made suicide planes, Shahed-131 and Shahed-136.
The documents also carried evidence of British naval operations in the Gulf region, which managed to intercept two ships and confiscate advanced Iranian weapons, including engines for ballistic missiles, and a number of surface-to-air missiles that were on their way to the Houthis.
According to official British estimates, Iran has provided Russia with more than 400 attack drones. Ukrainian forces have recovered several samples from drones that Iran is transferring to Russia, including the Shahed-131, Shahed-136 and Muhajir-6 models. Their wreckage has been examined and analyzed in laboratories in Ukraine and abroad.
The Shahed-131 is an Iranian-made and designed suicide drone. It was presented for the first time, according to the data, at the Iranian defense exhibition in 2015. Since then, it has been used in the Middle East, especially in the attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia in 2019. Iran exported the planes to Russia, which in turn used them in its attacks after the invasion of Ukraine.
Shahed-136 is also a suicide attack aircraft of Iranian design and manufacture. Its use was recorded for the first time in Yemen in September 2020, before the Houthis revealed it in the spring of 2021. Iran displayed the plane on more than one occasion, the last of which was in May, according to official Western reports. This type of drone was used in attacks on ships in the Gulf of Oman, and was monitored several times in Ukraine.
Senior British Researcher Dr. Tobias Burke told Asharq Al-Awsat that there has recently been increasing Western recognition of Iranian drones and their capabilities. He explained that Iranian-made drones and missiles represented a “major element” in the existing security threat in recent years.
He added that Western governments have always tended to focus on the nuclear program in their dealings with Iran, but the emergence of drones in the war in Ukraine has shed light on threats posed to the West by the access of armed groups and militias in the Middle East to these war technologies.
Iran’s partners, such as Hezbollah or the Houthis, would not only be able to obtain these drones, but could also acquire the technology and knowledge of how to develop them, Burke told Asharq Al-Awsat.
He added that in the future, governments would not only be facing the proliferation of weapons, but also the spread of technology, stressing that dealing with the supply chain and smuggling corridors would become “more difficult.”
According to Burke, the use of Iranian weapons in the war in Ukraine has become a security priority for all European governments, noting that missiles and drones jumped to the top of the agenda, and will shape the features of Western governments’ dealings with Iran from now on.
