The US military is considering sending thousands of Iranian weapons and more than a million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine as part of Washington’s latest push for war against Russia.
A Wall Street Journalnak (WSJ), unnamed U.S. and European officials said the arsenal would include more than 5,000 assault weapons, 1.6 million rounds of small arms ammunition, a small number of anti-tank missiles and more than 7,000 melee flares recently seized in the Gulf of Oman.
Although this stockpile of weapons is small compared to what Western countries have sent to Ukraine over the past year, Pentagon officials are said to see the shipment as symbolic punishment for Iran’s supply of drones to Russia, a claim both Tehran and Moscow deny.
“It’s a message to take weapons intended to arm Iranian proxies and turn them around to achieve our priorities in Ukraine, where Iran is supplying weapons to Russia.” a US official told the WSJ.
But the transfer of weapons from one conflict to another remains a legal challenge for the White House, as the UN arms embargo on Iran requires Western powers to destroy, store or dispose of seized weapons.
US President Joe Biden could presumably overcome this legal hurdle by creating an executive order or working with Congress to authorize the US to seize the weapons and send them to Ukraine under civil forfeiture authorities.
“What difference will this make to the war? Much heavier weapons are being sent” Nasr al-Din Amir, Yemen’s Deputy Minister of Information, told the American newspaper about Washington’s plans. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Washington and its North Atlantic allies have been exhausting their arsenals to help Kiev counter Moscow’s forces.
At Monday’s meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “Ukraine’s current ammunition release rate is many times our current production rate.” Western leaders recently tried to convince Latin American countries to donate their weapons stockpiles to Ukraine in its desperate fight against Russia, but their proposal was immediately rejected.
“We are not on either side. We are on the side of peace” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said last month.
His Brazilian colleague, Luiz Inacio Lula da Saliva, made a similar statement to Biden at the meeting held at the White House: “Brazil is a country of peace. At this moment we need to find those who want peace, a word that has been used very little so far”.
“I don’t think sending weapons to prolong a conflict is supported in Latin America” Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told the Financial Times. Argentina followed a similar line when a defense ministry spokesman confirmed that Buenos Aires would not cooperate in the war.