London announced on Thursday new sanctions against Iran targeting three generals and an arms manufacturer “responsible for supplying Russia with suicide drones” to bomb Ukraine.
The United Kingdom joined the European Union countries that imposed sanctions on Tehran earlier on Thursday. “By handing over these drones, Iran is demonstrating a relentless pursuit of combat, taking advantage of Russia’s heinous attacks against Ukrainian civilians,” the British government said in a statement.
The European Union has approved sanctions against Iran for its actions in Ukraine. And the Czech presidency of the European Union announced that the countries of the Union decided to freeze the assets of 3 individuals and one entity responsible for supplying drones.
The presidency stated on Twitter: “European Union countries have decided to freeze the assets of 3 individuals and one entity responsible for supplying drones, and are also ready to extend sanctions to include four other Iranian entities already on the previous sanctions list.”
The sanctions will go into effect on Thursday.
On Wednesday evening, the European Union reiterated that Iran is behind Supplying drones to Russia targeting Ukrainian cities.
“We have collected our own evidence” and the bloc is preparing for a “clear, rapid and firm response,” said Nabila Masrali, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
A list seen by Agence France-Presse showed that the European Union had prepared to impose sanctions on three Iranian military officials, including General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces.
The sanctions also include “Shahid” for Aerospace Industries, a company linked to the Revolutionary Guards.
Iranian Shahed 171 drone fires a shell during training
Ukraine reported weeks ago about Russia launched attacks with Iranian Shahed-136 . dronesdrones whose warheads explode in suicide landings, and Kyiv moved to cut ties with Tehran.
On Wednesday, the Ukrainian military reported that it had shot down more than 220 Iranian-made drones in about a month, despite the fact that the bombing of Kyiv by drones resulted in the death of five people on Monday.
Until 2023
The United States says that Iran’s provision of war drones to Russia violates Resolution 2231 of the United Nations Security Council in 2015, which sponsored a nuclear agreement that is now in shambles.
And in 2020, the ban imposed by the resolution on Iranian conventional arms sales ended, despite attempts by the previous Donald Trump administration to extend it.
But the resolution bans until October 2023 all Iranian arms exports that are not authorized by the Security Council if they benefit ballistic missile capabilities.
US State Department spokesman Vidant Patel said Wednesday that “Iran’s provision of these specific types of drones to Russia is a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, and it is a matter of the UN Security Council.”
The alleged arms transfers come as Iran faces mounting pressure over its crackdown on the country’s largest protests in years following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the “moral police”.
The unrest led to the imposition of new Western sanctions on Iran and the decline of efforts by US President Joe Biden to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement that Donald Trump withdrew from.
Western officials have highlighted the Iranian marches as evidence that Russia, historically one of the world’s largest arms exporters, is depleting its arsenal with battlefield losses.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement that the United States had “a lot of evidence” that Russia had used Iranian war drones in Ukraine, stressing that this evidence was irrefutable even if Tehran continued to “lie and deny it.”
“We will not hesitate to impose sanctions and other appropriate measures against all those involved in these operations to transfer” drones from Iran to Russia, he added.
According to a French diplomatic source, “the UN Security Council will hold a (public) meeting on the protection of civilians on Friday, at the request of France and Mexico, to discuss the issue of indiscriminate strikes against civilians that may amount to “war crimes.”