Russia is sharing secret nuclear information and technology with Iran in exchange for ballistic missiles to wage its war on Ukraine, sparking concern in the United States and United Kingdom, Bloomberg reported on Saturday.
U.S. and U.K. officials discussed the situation in Washington, D.C., last week, according to the report.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met President Joe Biden at the White House on Friday to discuss “a range of foreign policy issues.”
They expressed deep concern about Iran and North Korea’s supply of lethal weapons to Russia and China’s support to Russia’s defense industrial base, according to a White House readout.
“Moscow is sharing technology that Iran needs, including on nuclear issues. And, of course, we know that Russia also shares some space information with Iran. And we’ve been working with our allies to ensure that there is a significant consequence to this action,” White House National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby told the press on Sept. 12.
He said the United Kingdom, France and Germany would suspend “certain lucrative commercial ties with Iran.” The United States would supplement the action with sanctions, including against Iran’s national airline, Iran Air.
Iran has long used its ostensibly civilian airlines for military purposes. In 2019, France banned Iran’s Mahan Air from entering the country for its role in shipping troops and arms to Syria and other Middle Eastern hotspots.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meeting U.K. Foreign Minister David Lammy in London last week to open the U.K.-U.S. Strategic Dialogue, confirmed that Russia had received ballistic missiles from Iran.
“We’ve warned Tehran publicly, we’ve warned Tehran privately that taking this step would constitute a dramatic escalation,” said Blinken.
(Iran has provided Russia with hundreds of drones since its invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.)
Lammy and Blinken “both agreed that Iran’s nuclear program had never been more advanced and posed a clear threat to regional and global peace and security,” read a joint statement released by the U.K. Foreign Office on Sept. 14.
Also on Saturday, the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations condemned “in the strongest terms” Iran’s export and Russia’s procurement of Iranian surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.
“Iran must immediately cease all support to Russia’s illegal and unjustifiable war against Ukraine,” the group said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry and Iran’s embassy at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna didn’t respond to requests for comment, according to Bloomberg.
On Sept. 10, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said that U.S. claims that Iran provided ballistic missiles to Russia are “ugly propaganda.”
“Spreading false and misleading news about the transfer of Iranian weapons to some countries is just an ugly propaganda and lie with the aim of concealing the dimensions of the massive illegal arms support of the United States and some Western countries for the genocide in the Gaza Strip,” he wrote, referring to Israel’s 11-month war with Hamas.
