Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a concert dedicated to the 100th birth anniversary of Soviet and Russian poet Rasul Gamzatov at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Russia, September 28, 2023. Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via REUTERS
Without indicating whether it now intended to back Tehran’s missile development, Russia said it need not comply with U.N. Security Council sanctions once they expire on Wednesday.
“Supplies to and from Iran of products falling under the Missile Technology Control Regime no longer require prior approval by the U.N. Security Council,” the Russian foreign ministry stated in a statement on Tuesday.
The restrictions were defined in Resolution 2231 of 2015 endorsing a deal by which Britain, China, the European Union, France, Germany, Russia and the U.S. removed sanctions against Iran in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear programme.
In 2018, then-President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal, known as the JCPOA, leaving unilateral U.S. sanctions in place, and Iran subsequently accelerated its nuclear programme, which it says is purely peaceful.
With the deal in shreds, U.N. sanctions intended to prevent the theocratic state developing long-range nuclear-capable ballistic missiles came back into force. But these will finally expire on Wednesday.
Russia has grown close to Iran since invading Ukraine in February 2022 and itself being shunned by the West. Many of the hundreds of one-way attack drones it has used to bomb Ukraine in the last year are believed to have been made in Iran.
