White House: Iran directly involved in attacks on civilians and infrastructure of Ukraine
Given Iran’s transfer of combat drones to Russia, as well as presence of Iranian personnel in occupied Crimea to help target these UAVs at peaceful cities in Ukraine, United States believes that Tehran has directly joined Putin’s war.
This was stated by the Coordinator for Strategic Communications of the White House National Security Council John Kirby, informs Censor.NЕТ referring to Ukrinform.
"According to our assessments, the Iranian military was directly in the Crimea and assisted the Russians in their operations (on UAV strikes on Ukrainian cities - ed.)," the White House spokesman said.
He stressed that the Russians have already received batches of drones from Iran and will obviously have additional supplies in the future. Kirby also noted that Russia is seeking to obtain other weapons from Iran, such as surface-to-surface missiles to use them in hostilities against Ukraine.
In this regard, the US administration representative stressed that Iran and Russia can lie to the whole world, but will not hide the facts.
"And the fact is that Iran is now involved directly on the ground, providing weapons that are striking civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, and actually killing ordinary people and destroying civilian infrastructure in Ukraine," Kirby said.
He stressed that the United States "will use all tools to expose, deter and counter" the supply of weapons from Iran used against the Ukrainian people. In addition, he said, the United States will redouble efforts to enforce U.S. sanctions against the Russian and Iranian arms sectors.
"We will continue to impose and rigorously enforce sanctions against those who help Iran support Russia's war against Ukraine," he added.
Earlier, Iran rejected accusations of arms supplies to Russia.
The White House said that Iran is lying, when it claims that it does not supply Russia with kamikaze drones for the war with Ukraine.
According to the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Iranian military in the occupied Crimea teach Russians how to use kamikaze drones.
