Iran to build drone factory in Russia and supply missiles

IRAN and Russia have deepened their military alliance and are working on building joint drone production lines, British and US intelligence warned.

The Ministry of Defence said that the Kremlin was now reliant on Iran to top up its supplies of missiles and drones.

“Iran’s support to the Russian mili- tary is likely to grow in the coming months: Russia is attempting to obtain more weapons, including hundreds of ballistic missiles,” it said.

It comes after the US said that Iran is now “Russia’s top military backer”.

“Russia is seeking to collaborate with Iran in areas like weapons development training,” said John Kirby of the US national security council, adding that Russia intended to “provide Iran with advanced military components” including helicopters and air defence systems.

Russia has so far relied on Iranian drones to bolster its dwindling supplies of missiles after nearly nine months of war and has been deploying them to destroy power stations and other civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Iranian drones, the Shahed-136 is the most common, are cheap to produce, and have a long range.

Russian technicians have repainted them as Geranium-2 to try to disguise them and Iran has denied supplying Russia but testimonies and reports from Ukraine have confirmed the deals.

Now an unnamed security official has told The Washington Post that Iran had agreed to send 6,000 drones to Russia and “to supply designs as well as technical supervision for the planned Russian drone factory, which is expected to be located in the Tatarstan region”. Tatarstan lies in central Russia. The source said that Russia would pay Iran $1 billion (£820 million) in addition to “still unknown inducements”.