West News Wire: Iran has categorically rejected involvement in any joint UAV production project with Russia and referred to any suggestions to the contrary in Western media as “sheer lies.”
The statement was made in a tweet on Monday by Nour News, which is associated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
The agency declared: “Reports by Western media in this regard are plain lies. Iran does not participate in any independent or collaborative project for the development of drones in Russia.”
“Western strategists had better find more credible justifications for the continuance of the war of attrition in Ukraine,” it continued.
On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal cited unnamed “officials from a country aligned with the US” as saying that Moscow and Tehran have advanced plans to build an Iranian-designed factory in Russia to produce at least 6,000 combat drones.
“The two countries are aiming to build a faster drone that could pose new challenges for Ukrainian air defenses,” the WSJ said, citing officials.
Tehran has multiple times rejected in the strongest terms the Western claims of Iran’s delivery of weapons and drones to Russia to be used against Ukraine, saying the country has been engaged in defense cooperation with Moscow for long and pursues a resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.
In a statement last week, the Iranian Defense Ministry announced that one of its workshop complexes in the central city of Isfahan had come under attack from a number of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs), but the complex’s air defenses successfully repelled the attack.
The ministry underscored that the unsuccessful attack did not cause any loss of life and only led to minor damage to the roof of a workshop. The complex, it added, continues its ordinary operations following the attack.
Reacting to the report, Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, took to Twitter to express his joy. He said “Ukraine did warn you.”
An informed source told Nour News on Tuesday that Iran is likely to change its approach toward the Ukraine war in response to the Kiev government’s implicit admittance of responsibility for the foiled drone attack in Isfahan.
Separately, the Kremlin spokesman was quoted by Russia’s TASS news agency as denying The Wall Street Journal’s claim about Moscow’s cooperation with Tehran in drone production.
Dmitry Peskov stated on Monday that “Russia is focusing on its own program of producing unmanned aerial vehicles.”
“Russia has a range of its own projects for building unmanned aerial systems for quite various aims and these programs are being implemented,” Peskov continued.
The Kremlin spokesman mentioned that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a document outlining guidelines for creating unmanned aerial systems at the end of December of the previous year.
He continued, “The president of state also issued a directive to approve the plan of developing unmanned aircraft through 2030 and for a time until 2035, which specifies drone mass manufacturing.
“We have our own development projects, and I do not know what sources the newspaper relied on in its reports,” Peskov said in his closing statement.
