The US is looking at whether Russian Federation has violated a UN Security Council resolution on military dealings with Tehran by using an Iranian air base to carry out strikes inside Syria, the state department said on Wednesday.
Advertisement
But this does not mean that we provided our base to Russian Federation for military use.
Indeed, in his Tuesday interview with state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) Iran’s Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani underscored that “Iran and Russian Federation enjoy strategic cooperation in the fight against terrorism in Syria, and share their facilities and capacities to this end”.
Russian Federation first announced the strikes on Tuesday from near the Iranian city of Hamedan, 175 miles southwest of Tehran.
Russian Federation backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the United States believes the Syrian leader must step down and is supporting some rebel groups which are fighting to unseat him.
Iran and Russian Federation have been assisting the Syrian government in fight against the foreign-backed militancy which has been holding swathes of territory in the country as well as in Iraq.
The announcement from Russian Federation marks the first significant stationing of its troops in Iran since World War II.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that any U.S. dismay over Moscow’s military cooperation with Iran should not distract from efforts to reach the U.S. -Russia deal on coordinating action in Syria and securing a cease-fire.
As Russian bombers launched an air raid on Syria from Iranian soil for a second day, the speaker, Ali Larijani, denied Iran had given basing rights to Russia.
In 1953, the spy agencies of the United Kingdom and USA orchestrated the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, consolidating the power of the pro-Western Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
On Tuesday, almost 20 civilians were reported killed in airstrikes in eastern districts.
At the same time the chairman of Iran’s parliament Ali Larijani stressed that Russian Federation does not have a permanent military base within the Islamic Republic.
Larijani did not directly discuss the strikes in his comments.
The new arrangement is controversial in Iran because the constitution adopted after the 1979 revolution specifically bars any foreign power from basing troops in the country.
The head of Iran’s National Security Council was quoted by state news agency IRNA as saying Tehran and Moscow were now sharing facilities.
Earlier on Tuesday, Russia’s state-backed Rossiya 24 channel said the deployment would allow the Russian air force to cut flight times by 60 percent and increase bombing payloads. “We haven’t made an assessment”, he added.
Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies called the housing of Russian bombers in Iran as representative of “a major strategic shift in the Middle East” that is likely to frustrate U.S. efforts to contain Iran’s influence in the region.
Rebel shelling in Syria’s battered northern city of Aleppo killed 12 people including a child on Wednesday, state media said.
Advertisement
That raises questions about whether the move was a strategic necessity or a political message from the Kremlin to Washington.
