The United States government said on Thursday that Iranian troops were "directly engaged on the ground" in Crimea and were supporting Russia's drone weapons that were attacking Ukraine's power stations and other key infrastructure.
The White House called the situation troubling evidence of Iran's deepening involvement in helping Russia. In a statement, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Iran sent a "relatively small number" of troops to Crimea, which is a part of Ukraine unilaterally annexed by Russia.
Iran's Support of Russia
The troops allegedly work to assist Russian soldiers in launching Iranian-made drones against Ukraine's infrastructure. Several members of a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps were sent to support Moscow's forces in using the drones, the British government said.
The findings of the US intelligence also come as President Joe Biden's administration continues to mount additional pressure on Tehran to pull back from assisting Russia in its war on Ukraine with the use of Iranian-made drones, as per the Associated Press.
In recent days, Russia has increasingly turned to Iranian-supplied drones to attack Ukraine as well as using Kalibr and Iskander cruise missiles. Moscow used these weapons to carry out a barrage of attacks on non-military structures.
This week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian forces have destroyed roughly 30% of Ukraine's power stations since October 10. On the other hand, Kirby said that the information the US has is that the Iranians placed trainers and tech support in Crimea but let the Russians do the piloting of the drones.
According to CBS News, Kirby added that the Biden administration was now looking at imposing new sanctions on Tehran. He said that the White House would look for ways to make it more difficult for Iran to sell such devastating weapons to Russia that would aid the latter's war on Ukraine.
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Technical Support for the Drones
The US government first revealed that Russia was purchasing Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles this summer. During a closed-door UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, the United States, the UK, and France accused Iran of selling drones to Russia in violation of a UN Security Council ban against such transfer.
American authorities believe that Iran may have deployed military personnel to assist Russia partly due to Moscow's lack of familiarity with the Iranian-made drones. Findings of declassified US intelligence showed that Russia faced technical problems with the weapons soon after taking delivery of the drones in August.
Kirby said that the systems themselves were suffering failures and were not performing to the standards that apparently the customers have expected. He added that this prompted Iran to move in some trainers and technical support to assist Moscow in using the drones with better lethality.
On Tuesday, State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said that the deepening relationship between Russia and Tehran should be considered a "profound threat." While it was not immediately clear how many Iranian personnel were sent to Crimea, one source briefed on US intelligence said that there were "dozens" in the region, CNN reported.
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