Iran sent short-range missiles to Russia, Western officials say

Iran has sent short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, according to U.S. and European officials, despite warnings from Washington and its allies not to provide those armaments to Moscow to use against targets in Ukraine.

The new missiles are expected to help Russia further its efforts to destroy Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said this past week involved 4,000 bombs a month across the country.

The U.S. and European officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, confirmed that after months of warnings about sanctions, Iran has shipped several hundred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. The delivery was reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Iran denied providing the weapons in a statement released Friday by its permanent mission to the United Nations, saying its position on the war was unchanged.

“Iran considers the provision of military assistance to the parties engaged in the conflict – which leads to increased human casualties, destruction of infrastructure, and a distancing from cease-fire negotiations – to be inhumane,” the statement said. “Thus, not only does Iran abstain from engaging in such actions itself, but it also calls upon other countries to cease the supply of weapons to the sides involved in the conflict.”

The Group of 7 nations warned in March that they would impose coordinated sanctions on Iran if it carried out the missile transfer, a warning repeated at a NATO summit meeting in Washington in July.

In a statement Saturday, Sean Savett, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, declined to confirm the missile transfers explicitly but hinted at growing cooperation between Iran and Russia.

“We have been warning of the deepening security partnership between Russia and Iran since the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and are alarmed by these reports,” Savett said. He said the United States and its key allies had made clear previously that they “are prepared to deliver significant consequences.”

“Any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and lead to the killing of more Ukrainian civilians,” he added. “This partnership threatens European security and illustrates how Iran’s destabilizing influence reaches beyond the Middle East and around the world.”

But despite the threats, and bitter relations between the U.S. and Iran, President Joe Biden has many reasons for restraint.

One is that the Biden administration has been conducting elaborate diplomacy with Iran for months, seeking to prevent the war in the Gaza Strip from escalating into a regional conflict. Through intermediaries, Biden officials have urged Iran not to launch military strikes on Israel or to order a major attack by its ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

With the American presidential campaign in full swing and Biden a lame duck, a senior European official said, it was not clear how strong Washington’s response would be.

Biden has refused Zelenskyy’s repeated requests to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of longer-range missiles to attack airfields deep inside Russia. From those sites, Russia can attack Ukraine with heavy bombs equipped with fins to glide and GPS packs. Ukraine does not have missiles with enough range to reach those airfields.

Zelenskyy on Friday went to the Ukraine Contact Group meeting in Ramstein, Germany, to ask for the restrictions to be lifted, and later in the evening, he repeated his plea at a major conference on Europe in Cernobbio, Italy. In those remarks, he pleaded for “air defenses to defend ourselves.” He said Ukraine would not use any missiles provided by allies against civilian targets.

“We want to use them just on military airfields,” he said.

“People are afraid we will attack the Kremlin,” he added. “It’s a pity we can’t.” But even the missiles he has requested could never reach that far, he said.

The supply of Iranian missiles to Moscow could prompt Biden to approve longer-range missiles to Ukraine, the officials suggested Saturday. But the European official noted that Biden has been wary of pushing President Vladimir Putin of Russia too far, fearing an escalation of the war and a direct conflict with NATO.

“I think the real question is why Iran made this belated decision to transfer the missiles, given clear signals from Europe about increased sanctions that will inevitably result,” said Andrew S. Weiss, a Russia expert and former senior U.S. official now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Weiss said that Iran has been especially concerned about the potential for punitive action by Europe – which does not already have as many sanctions on Iran as does the United States – over any missile transfers to Russia.

There is also concern among Western officials not to corner Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who is thought to be something of a moderate in the country’s ruling establishment.

Elected in July, Pezeshkian has said he hopes to improve the domestic economy by securing sanctions relief from Europe and the United States. Western officials also hope that he will help efforts to restrain Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.