The flights from Iranian territory started on August 16, a day after a visit to Tehran by a Russian deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov.
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Bahram Ghasemi, spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry told reporters in Tehran that Russia’s “mission was a specific, authorised mission and it’s over for now”.
The Russian aircraft’s presence in Hamedan was the first time since World War Two that a foreign power used an Iranian base for operations. Both Iran and Russian Federation support embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country’s long war.
Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan told Iran TV on Sunday evening that the Islamic republic will negotiate to buy Sukhoi fighter and attack aircraft from Russian Federation as the S-300 buy is nearing its end.
The apparent criticism of a close ally came after Russian Federation announced last week that it was using Iran’s Hamedan base in western Iran for aerial strikes against insurgent groups in Syria.
“These planes did not leave (Monday) but on Thursday, in accordance with the land operations and not under pressure from any other country”, Shamkhani said on state television.
According to some Iranian lawmakers, the move was a breach of the Iranian constitution which forbids “the establishment of any kind of foreign military base in Iran, even for peaceful purposes”.
With both Iran and Russian Federation supporting Syria’s Assad to the hilt, and the USA and other western powers, acting in sync with Sunni powers in the region like Saudi Arabia, the arch rival of Iran, the stage now seems set for a new proxy war after the exit of the Islamic State, the common enemy of both the camps. It also highlights the public unpopularity of allowing Russian Federation to use the air base, which marked the first time since the revolution that a foreign military has used Iran as a staging ground.
Activists in Syria, however, accuse Russian Federation and Iran of aiding the Assad regime in targeting civilian neighbourhoods and infrastructure.
“There was a showing-off and a discourteous attitude behind the announcement”, he was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency.
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Meanwhile, Russia has withdrawn its military aircraft from Iran’s Hamadan air base for strikes in Syria, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov confirmed on Monday. Iran’s minister of defense, Brig. Gen.
