LONDON – The United States and Britain formally accused Iran on Tuesday of supplying short-range ballistic missiles to Russia to use against Ukraine, announcing new sanctions on Moscow and Tehran before a joint visit to Kyiv by their top diplomats.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking alongside British Foreign Secretary David Lammy during a visit to London, said Iran had ignored warnings that the transfer of such weapons would be a profound escalation of the conflict.
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He told reporters that dozens of Russian military personnel had been trained in Iran to use the Fath-360 close-range ballistic missile system, which has a maximum range of 75 miles (120 kilometers).
“Russia has now received shipments of these ballistic missiles and will likely use them within weeks in Ukraine, against Ukrainians,” Blinken said. “The supply of Iranian missiles enables Russia to use more of its arsenal for targets that are further from the front line.”
At the Pentagon, the press secretary said these were unlikely to be the only shipments. “One has to assume that if Iran is providing Russia with these types of missiles, that it’s very likely it would not be a one-time deal, that this would be a source of capability that Russia would seek to tap in the future,” said Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder.
The West's allegations about the missile transfers come as the Kremlin is trying to repel Ukraine’s surprise offensive, which has claimed hundreds of square miles of territory in Russia’s Kursk region. The accusations could embolden Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to further ramp up pressure on the U.S. and other allies to allow Ukraine to use Western-supplied missiles to strike deep inside Russia and hit sites from which Moscow launches aerial attacks.
Iran's foreign ministry denies providing ballistic missiles to Russia, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported.
“Publishing wrong and misleading reports about transferring Iranian weapons to some countries is merely an ugly propaganda and lie aimed at hiding illegal massive size weaponry support by the U.S. and some Western nations for genocide in the Gaza Strip," it quoted ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani as saying.
The U.S., U.K. and other Western allies are pressing for a cease-fire to end the devastating war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and avoid attacks from Iranian proxies in the region escalating into a broader war.
Britain, France and Germany announced new sanctions Tuesday against Iran and Russia, calling the missile transfers “a direct threat to European security.” The penalties include the cancellation of air services agreements with Iran, which will restrict Iran Air’s ability to fly to the U.K. and Europe.
Britain also said it and the United States were sanctioning those involved in sending Iranian drones and missiles to Russia. The sanctions include travel bans and asset freezes on two senior officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a senior defense ministry official, as well as several businesses and five Russian cargo ships alleged to have transported supplies from Iran to Russia. Three Russian military units involved with aviation and aerospace also were sanctioned.
The U.S. Treasury and the State Department in the past few years have imposed economic sanctions on people and companies based in Iran, China, Russia, Turkey and other nations who officials allege are connected with the development of Iran’s drone program.
The sanctions on Iranian drone production tied to Russia’s invasion, dating to November 2022, were issued despite Iranian leaders’ denials that the country had sent them.
Sanctions, among other things, bar people and businesses from accessing property or financial assets held in the U.S. and prevent U.S. companies and citizens from doing business with them.
The announcement precedes a Blinken and Lammy visit Wednesday to Kyiv, where they will meet Zelenskyy and other officials to discuss bolstering the country's defenses. The rare joint visit was unusually announced in advance — a public signal of U.S-.U.K. support for Ukraine ahead of what’s likely to be a brutal winter of Russian attacks.
Asked whether the U.S. would allow weapons it supplied to be used to strike targets deeper inside Russia, Blinken said all use of weapons needed to be allied to a strategy.
He said one goal of the visit this week “is to hear directly from the Ukrainian leadership, including … President Zelenskyy, about exactly how the Ukrainians see their needs in this moment, toward what objectives, and what we can do to support those needs.”
President Joe Biden has allowed Ukraine to fire U.S.-provided missiles across the border into Russia in self-defense but largely limited the distance over concerns about further escalating the conflict. Blinken met Tuesday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who will sit down with Biden at the White House on Friday.
“We will be listening intently to our Ukrainian partners, we will both be reporting back to the prime minister, to President Biden in the coming days, and I fully anticipate this is something they will take up when they meet on Friday,” Blinken said.
In the meantime, Ukraine is using its own weapons to hit targets deeper in Russia, launching on Tuesday one of the biggest drone attacks on Russian soil in the 2 1/2-year war to target multiple regions including Moscow.
Word of the alleged transfers from Iran began to emerge over the weekend. Lammy called them part of “a troubling pattern that we’re seeing. It is definitely a significant escalation.”
The U.S. and its allies have been warning Iran for months not to transfer ballistic missiles to Russia.
CIA Director William Burns, who was in London on Saturday for a joint appearance with his British intelligence counterpart, warned of the growing and “troubling” defense relationship involving Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, which he said threatens both Ukraine and Western allies in the Middle East.
The White House has repeatedly declassified and publicized intelligence findings that show North Korea has sent ammunition and missiles to Russia to use against Ukraine, while Iran also supplies Moscow with attack drones and has assisted the Kremlin with building a drone-manufacturing factory.
China has held back from providing Russians with weaponry but has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry, according to U.S. officials.
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Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed.