Iran Claims To Add Drones To Its Navy, Expanding Its Military Reach

(New York, N.Y.) – In the days before Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Tehran, the Iranian regime announced that its warships and submarines will now be equipped with its domestically produced armed drones. The regime claimed that the drones can remain in the air for up to 24 hours and cover 600 miles. Such a claim, if true, would put Iran’s regional adversaries including Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and others within range. The Biden Administration believes that Russia has interest in acquiring advanced weapons-capable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, from Iran.

UAVs in their current operation already posed significant threat to U.S. servicemembers and allies in the region, having been used to launch attacks multiple times by Iran and its terrorist proxies. Iranian UAVs have been used to launch armed attacks targeting U.S. military personnel, commercial vessels in international waters, and civilians and critical infrastructure in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Using Iranian drones in Ukraine would represent a dangerous escalation in proliferation of such devices, especially after the expiration of the U.N. arms embargo on Iran under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in October 2020.  

To read United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI)’s resource The Iranian Drone Threat, please click here. 

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