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IRGC Commander: Iran Has Drones With Range of 7,000 Km

In this photo released on May 21, 2021, by Sepahnews, the website of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a new Gaza drone is displayed in an undisclosed location in Iran. (Sepahnews via AP)
In this photo released on May 21, 2021, by Sepahnews, the website of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a new Gaza drone is displayed in an undisclosed location in Iran. (Sepahnews via AP)
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IRGC Commander: Iran Has Drones With Range of 7,000 Km

In this photo released on May 21, 2021, by Sepahnews, the website of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a new Gaza drone is displayed in an undisclosed location in Iran. (Sepahnews via AP)
In this photo released on May 21, 2021, by Sepahnews, the website of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a new Gaza drone is displayed in an undisclosed location in Iran. (Sepahnews via AP)

Iran has drones with a range of 7,000 km, Iranian state media cited the top commander of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as saying on Sunday, a development which may be seen by Washington as a threat to regional stability.

Tehran's assertion comes as Iran and six major powers are in talks to revive a 2015 nuclear deal that former US President Donald Trump exited three years ago and reimposed sanctions.

Western military analysts say Iran sometimes exaggerates its capabilities, but drones are a key element in Tehran's border surveillance, especially the Gulf waters around the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil supply flows.

Iran and regional forces it backs have increasingly relied on drones in Yemen, Syria, Iraq in recent years.

"We have unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) with long range of 7,000 kilometers. They can fly, return home, and make landing wherever they are planned to," the Guards commander-in-chief Hossein Salami was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

US President Joe Biden is seeking to revive and eventually broaden the nuclear pact to put greater limits on Iran's nuclear and missile programs, as well as constraining its activities.

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Rutte: Russian Victory Over Ukraine Would Have Costly Impact on NATO's Credibility

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT
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Rutte: Russian Victory Over Ukraine Would Have Costly Impact on NATO's Credibility

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned on Thursday that a Russian victory over Ukraine would undermine the dissuasive force of the world’s biggest military alliance and that its credibility could cost trillions to restore.
NATO has been ramping up its forces along its eastern flank with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, deploying thousands of troops and equipment to deter Moscow from expanding its war into the territory of any of the organization’s 32 member countries.
“If Ukraine loses then to restore the deterrence of the rest of NATO again, it will be a much, much higher price than what we are contemplating at this moment in terms of ramping up our spending and ramping up our industrial production,” the Associated Press quoted Rutte as saying.
“It will not be billions extra; it will be trillions extra,” he said, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Rutte insisted that Ukraine’s Western backers must “step up and not scale back the support” they are providing to the country, almost three years after Russia’s full-fledged invasion began.
“We have to change the trajectory of the war,” Rutte said, adding that the West “cannot allow in the 21st century that one country invades another country and tries to colonize it."
"We are beyond those days,” he said.
Anxiety in Europe is mounting that US President Donald Trump might seek to quickly end the war in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on terms that are unfavorable to Ukraine, but Rutte appeared wary about trying to do things in a hurry.
“If we got a bad deal, it would only mean that we will see the president of Russia high-fiving with the leaders from North Korea, Iran and China and we cannot accept that,” the former Dutch prime minister said. “That would be geopolitically a big, big mistake.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski welcomed Trump's acknowledgement that it must be Russia which should make the first peace moves, but he cautioned that “this is not the Putin that President Trump knew in his first term.”
On Wednesday, Trump threatened to impose stiff taxes, tariffs and sanctions on Moscow if an agreement isn’t reached to end the war, but that warning will probably fall on deaf ears in the Kremlin. Russia's economy is already weighed down by a multitude of US and European sanctions.
Sikorksi warned that Putin should not be put at the center of the world stage over Ukraine.
“The president of the United States is the leader of the free world. Vladimir Putin is an outcast and an indicted war criminal for stealing Ukrainian children,” Sikorski said.
"I would suggest that Putin has to earn the summit, that if he gets it early, it elevates him beyond his, significance and gives him the wrong idea about the trajectory of this,” he said.