Russia has seized some of the weapons Ukraine received from the US and NATO and sent them to Iran, where the US believes that Tehran will make its own copies of the systems, CNN reported.
In recent years, there have been several instances of Russia capturing shoulder-mounted small arms, including Javelin anti-tank systems and Stinger anti-aircraft systems, which the Ukrainian army was forced to abandon on the battlefield.
In many cases, Russia has sent captured military equipment to Iran for further disassembly and analysis, likely so Iranian troops can attempt to make their own copies of these weapons.
Russia believes that supplying Western arms to Iran will embolden Tehran to continue supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine. Although it is not yet clear whether Iran has been able to successfully reverse engineer any of the US weapons seized in Ukraine, Tehran has proven extremely adept at developing weapon systems based on US equipment seized in the past, reported CNN.
Iran has a track record of demonstrating the ability to reverse-engineer American weapons. They reverse-engineered the TOW anti-tank guided missiles and created a near-perfect replica they called Orphan, which has since been circulated among the Youths and Hezbollah.
Iran could do the same with a stinger that could threaten both civilian and military aviation across the region. Hamas or Hezbollah could use a Javelin replica to threaten an Israeli Perceive tank.
In the hands of Iranian proxies, these weapons pose a real threat to Israel’s conventional forces, Jonathan Lord, director of Middle East security programs at the Center for a New American Security, was quoted as saying by CNN.
This particular coordination exemplifies a growing defense partnership between Russia and Iran, which has grown stronger over the past year as Russia becomes increasingly desperate for foreign military aid in its war against Ukraine.
John Kirby, the White House’s National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, said this partnership would not only destabilize Ukraine but could also pose a threat to Iran’s Middle Eastern neighbors.
