Thursday, October 20th, 2022, saw the imposition of further sanctions against Iran by Britain and the European Union in response to Tehran’s provision of drones that Russia used to strike Ukrainian military and civilian targets.
According to diplomats, the business responsible for producing the HESA Shahed 136 drones, together with three Iranian generals, will be the targets of the sanctions. On Thursday night, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly revealed the country’s decision, calling recent drone operations targeting energy supplies an “act of desperation.”
For weeks, Ukrainian officials have claimed that Russia has been attacking with Iranian Shahid-136 drones, unmanned aircraft whose weapons explode in suicide assaults.
The use of drones has been disputed by both Iran and Russia, with Tehran expressing a desire to hold discussions with Kyiv. On Wednesday, however, the EU announced that it had established that Iran had supplied Russia with the drones in question.
EU foreign policy leader Josep Borrell’s spokesperson Nabila Massrali stated, “We have acquired our evidence, and we will draft a clear, rapid, and robust EU reaction.”
General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the Iranian Armed Forces chief of staff, was one of three high-ranking military officials slated to face penalties, according to a list seen by AFP.
The US has said that supplying drones breaches UN Security Council resolutions.
The EU’s action comes as the United Nations Security Council prepares to discuss the drone attacks requested by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France behind closed doors.
The United States has claimed that the use of Iranian drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is in direct opposition to Resolution 2231, which the United Nations Security Council issued in 2015.
Despite Trump’s best efforts to extend it, the resolution prohibiting the sale of conventional armaments to Iran expired in 2020.
However, the United States claims that the resolution maintains a restriction on transfers that could benefit nuclear-capable ballistic missiles until October 2023, with the Security Council being the authority to grant authorization for such transfers. Western authorities have interpreted the employment of Iranian weaponry by Russian soldiers in Ukraine as evidence of the severe depletion of Moscow’s forces after over nine months of combat.
